Stylus: Offchain Labs Unveils EVM-Compatible Virtual Machine to Simplify dApp Development

Stylus allows developers with varied coding skills to build on Arbitrum using the familiar WebAssembly (WASM)-)-compatible languages.

Offchain Labs, the team behind Arbitrum and Stylus, announced the mainnet launch of Arbitrum Stylus, a backward-compatible virtual machine designed to remove common barriers to decentralized app (DApp) development for Web3.

Stylus enables developers with diverse coding skills to build on Arbitram using the familiar WebAssembly (WASM)-compatible languages. The convergence is set to accelerate the launch of powerful Web3 applications and use cases with minimal gas costs.

Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Korea Blockchain Week conference on Sept. 3, Offchain Labs co-founder and chief scientist Ed Felten explained that Stylus essentially combines the two primary ways of writing smart contracts on blockchains — the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and traditional programming languages like Rust, C and C++.

Offchain Labs co-founder and chief scientist Ed Felten at Korean Blockchain Week. Source: Cointelegraph

Felten went on to describe how layer-2 scaling solutions are beginning to move away from the EVM's limitations by adopting additional capabilities from new languages.

He added that Stylus' multi-language support will ultimately encourage developers to build on Arbitrum with “whatever tool makes the most sense for them.”

Stylus programs test run 70 times faster than EVM

In a parallel announcement, Steven Goldfeder, CEO and co-founder of Offchain Labs, added that developers can now use Stylus to expand their current market offerings.

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Apart from onboarding a new cohort of standard developers into the Arbitrum, Felten noted that some Stylus programs have outperformed those built on EVM, particularly programs demanding high computation power.

As a result, Stylus DApps can now execute more transactions within the gas limit and, in turn, reduce the overall cost, meeting the demand for performant and secure smart contract languages while simultaneously expanding the design space for onchain applications.

Future efforts to unite the developer community

Offchain Labs further plans to integrate other popular protocols, such as ZK-proofs, into Arbitrum, which currently demands high costs and computation.

Sharing his vision of the future of Web3, Felten added:

He believes that a hybrid protocol will be most economically viable in a non-specialized environment. Hence, Felten anticipates that Stylus' cost reduction will allow the development of more sophisticated decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

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