Dipping into the hotbed of cryptocurrency and digital asset sector, several altcoins aspire to hold an indomitable presence in the FinTech ecosystem, reinforced by hoards of mainstream investors who are expected to funnel billions, if not trillions of dollars onto the digital platform. Yet, an underlying challenge turns the spotlight onto the exigent need for coding experts who can navigate the complex architecture of the crypto industry or align with specialized projects.
The creators of the Arbitrum blockchain, Offchain Labs, are at the forefront of this struggle, galvanizing a broad spectrum of coders with their newly minted tool, Arbitrum Stylus. With its launch on a test network, the technical accomplishment by Offchain aims to open doors for developers capable of building smart contracts that align with the WebAssembly industry’s conventional format, or WASM. The ease of working with popular languages such as Rust, C++, and C, without having to abandon the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) standard, touted amongst crypto developers, ensues.
The entrepreneurial leap taken by Offchain may be shared, but it is far from original as several blockchains including Cosmos and Polkadot have adopted WebAssembly, which had its inception in the mid-2010s for programming applications for widely used browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox.
However, the hint of skepticism with Offchain’s decision to tread a similar path can be dispelled by their objective, i.e., to entice developers working with Rust, C++, and C to migrate their projects onto Arbitrum’s Nitro stack. Comparatively, Arbitrum’s move makes perfect sense when juxtaposed with the staggering count of 3 million coders with Rust and 12 million with C and C++ against a mere 20,000 developers versed in Solidity, the primary language for Ethereum coders.
Rachel Bousfield, the tech lead at Offchain, argues that adopting familiar programming languages significantly reduces friction and encourages more projects to explore the opportunities within the Ethereum ecosystem.
“Being able to use the tooling you already know, and have processes for, and have all this talent already hired at your company for, it’s a huge decrease in friction,” stated Bousfield, suggesting a promising leeway for C++ programmed video games into the blockchain sphere.
Ultimately, though, it falls upon the members of the Arbitrum DAO to decide whether to deploy Arbitrum Stylus onto the main Arbitrum network, a decision that Offchain CEO Steven Goldfeder expects to be reached towards the year’s end. As prospects for the tool’s voting and deployment remain hopeful, this vital decision rests solely in the hands of the community.
Source: Coindesk
