Blockchain has quickly made headlines as an innovative technology capable of revolutionizing the tech sector. Over time, its adoption has helped remove typical roadblocks businesses face to seize more opportunities; additionally, it's been shown to disrupt sectors including legal services, healthcare delivery systems and education services due to blockchain's impact.
Blockchain saw an almost 2000% spike in demand between 2017 and 2020, becoming one of the most desirable technologies on the market. Experts predict it could reach $20 billion by 2024, and companies are recruiting blockchain engineers as this technology becomes prevalent in previously unfamiliar industries.
Being competitive in this sector has never been more crucial, given the rising need for blockchain app developers. Technology enthusiasts must stay abreast of the top programming languages used for blockchain development if they wish to stay ahead of the game; therefore, this article details both how to construct a blockchain as well as the top five languages expected to become available by 2022.
Why Are Smart Contracts Necessary?
Developers may use smart contracts to develop decentralized apps and coins with multiple uses across industries ranging from finance and logistics to gaming and logistics experiences. Once created on the blockchain, however, smart-contract programs cannot typically be altered after being uploaded; once uploaded.
Decentralized applications or "dapps," smart contract-powered apps known as decentralized finance (or DeFi) technology, aim to transform the financial industry. DeFi applications enable cryptocurrency owners to carry out sophisticated financial operations from any location around the world without paying banks any commission fees, including saving, borrowing and purchasing insurance policies directly without incurring commission charges from banks or financial institutions.
Swapping currencies is costly and time-consuming in traditional finance. Furthermore, lending out liquid assets to strangers on the other side of the globe is not a simple or safe process for people. However, smart contracts enable both of those situations - as well as a wide range of additional possibilities.
How Do Smart Contracts Work?
The concept of smart contracts was initially put out in the 1990s by Nick Szabo, a lawyer and computer scientist. Szabo made the famous analogy between a vending machine and a smart contract. Consider a machine that charges a quarter for Coke cans. When you insert a dollar and choose a soda, the machine is programmed to either dispense your drink and give you 75 cents in change, or it will offer you to choose another drink or return your dollar if your pick is unavailable. An illustration of a basic smart contract is this one. Smart contracts have the ability to automate almost any type of transaction, just like a Coke machine can do the same without a human middleman.
The most widely used smart contract platform at the moment is Ethereum, although they may also be operated on a variety of other cryptocurrency blockchains, such as EOS, Neo, Tezos, Tron, Polkadot, and Algorand. Anyone may develop and add a smart contract to a blockchain. Any interested party may understand exactly what logic a smart contract follows when it gets digital assets since its code is open and publicly verifiable.
Top 6 Smart Contract Languages In 2024
As the foundation of all Web3 apps, smart contracts are written by those who aspire to become Web3 developers, by using smart contract languages.
To put it briefly, smart contracts are computer programs that are implemented and run on a blockchain network. They provide deterministic assurances that allow several parties to reach a consensus that is impervious to tampering.
In order to provide users with more equal access to financial primitives, stronger, trust-minimized assurances, and sovereign ownership over digital assets, a plethora of innovative use cases for smart contracts are now being developed, ranging from games to financial applications.
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Top Smart Contract Languages
Solidity
Solidity, the primary programming language used with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), has proven popular and is utilized by numerous EVM-compatible blockchains.
Solidity Pros
Solidity is a high-level Turing-complete language that makes many low-level issues transparent to developers, making code creation much faster. Solidity syntax offers developers a quick path into Web3, as its similarities to JavaScript make for an easy transition.
Solidity provides novice smart contract developers with built-in safety features to reduce costly errors and access libraries and tools, as well as superior documentation and assistance on developer forums compared to alternative languages like Web3. Furthermore, its vast popularity enables it to reach beyond Web 3.
Solidity Cons
Solidity's function overloading features can often damage code readability, while its syntax may prove challenging for developers without prior object-oriented programming experience. Furthermore, some aspects of programming with Solidity might not be familiar - for instance, its lack of native support for decimals may prove incredibly challenging.
Coding with Solidity may prove more draining for experienced Web3 developers than writing code in lower-level languages.
Vyper
After Solidity, Vyper is one of the two most popular Web3 programming languages compatible with EVMs for blockchains. This contract-oriented, pythonic programming language features strong typing support as well as compact compiler code production for effective bytecode production.
Vyper Pros
Start here to get the most accessible Web3 programming experience for Python developers: Vyper code is designed to look and behave just like Python code.
Vyper's straightforward language and compiler implementation promotes code readability and auditability, making it more straightforward for programmers to create secure smart contracts that can be put into action. Furthermore, as one of two popular smart contract programming languages on the market today - alongside Solidity - Vyper features many similar tools and toolkits.
Vyper Cons
Solidity provides some valuable utilities that have yet to be released into Vyper, while Solidity boasts an established community base compared to Vyper.
Vyper's programming language isn't Turing-complete and lacks features such as recursive calls, modifiers, and class inheritance - some due to intentional design decisions made for contract security and auditability; nonetheless, developers must put forth additional effort to overcome this limitation. Furthermore, as Vyper remains under development compared to more mature languages, it offers fewer features at this point in its evolution.
Read More: Unlocking the Future: How Blockchain Technology Can Make You Smarter and Safer
Other Languages
Though Vyper and Solidity have emerged as leading platforms for developing smart contracts, other nascent blockchain programming languages may prove equally as efficient in creating them.
Yul
Yul is an Ethereum intermediate language compatible with EVMs.
Yul is designed to easily translate to bytecode, making it an effective solution for Web3 developers looking to optimize smart contracts and lower gas expenses. Though suitable as both an educational resource and producing efficient code, Yul truly excels when applied as part of an ecosystem or tooling platform.
Cairo
Cairo is a Turing-complete programming language that develops general computing programs with STARK-probability properties.
Cairo primarily converts program logic into STARK proofs, providing verifiable computation resolved on the Ethereum blockchain. StarkNet is an overlay network composed of top-of-Ethereum nodes. Cairo provides an efficient method of developing smart contracts scalable enough to handle transactions made using the StarkEx network; unfortunately, though, its adoption beyond StarkEx remains low.
Rust
Rust stands apart from many of its counterparts on this list as an increasingly popular smart contract programming language for non-EVM compatible blockchains, like Polkadot and Solana. Plus, it's not limited to Web3 development.
Rust is a safe, fast programming language designed to eliminate unnecessary bulk. Due to its compact data structures, it makes for suitable blockchain apps with limited capacities; however, many blockchains lack comprehensive support for the Rust programming language or necessary tools.
Move
Move is a programming language built using Rust that was initially developed for Meta's Diem blockchain.
The move is an innovative system centered on superior resources, increased security, and upgraded verifiability. Most significantly, its programming language permits blockchain-agnostic integrations by providing resources at the type level rather than supporting one or two specific coin types, such as bitcoin or ether. At present, it primarily operates within the Aptos and Sui blockchains, where its usage has increased over time.
How To Select The Best Programming Language For Smart Contracts
There is no one-size-fits-all language when it comes to blockchains and smart contracts; therefore, authors cannot use one language exclusively when writing smart contracts. Below is an informal chart that may assist with finding blockchains that support your preferred coding language for smart contracts.
Solidity and Vyper are excellent languages for studying how smart contracts function and developer tooling is available on Web3. When starting without knowing which blockchain or language they'll build upon, these may serve as good starting points and can serve as guides as they explore more profound possibilities.
Consider that only a select few developers specialize in Web3 development, with this area rapidly growing and changing over time.
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Conclusion
Several programming languages should be given serious consideration to fully capitalize on the emerging opportunities in smart contract development companies. As this article has detailed, each has different applications that may help develop various Blockchain and cryptocurrency-related solutions. Therefore, becoming familiar with what language best fits a particular type of smart contract allows you to hone your talents further in this arena.
