Since the public launch of Arbitrum One on August. 31, 2021, the Arbitrum ecosystem has equipped developers with flexible tools to unleash their imaginations and build more powerful, efficient and original products on the blockchain. Today's activation of Stylus on Arbitrum One and Nova mainnets is a milestone that will further enhance that effort.

Arbitrum Stylus on mainnet is here, just in time to celebrate Arbitrum’s third anniversary! Stylus is on Arbitrum One and Nova chains and we want you to Do More. With Stylus. Orbit chains, too, will have the chance to use and experiment with this new technology should they choose to do so - after all, Your Chain. Your Rules.

Currently, Solidity is one of the most widespread smart contract languages on Ethereum. Solidity has played, and will continue to play, an integral role in shaping blockchain technology as we know it. However, there are challenges when building smart contracts with Solidity. It is estimated that there are currently around 20,000 Solidity developers today. This number is significantly less than Rust, which has an estimated 3 million developers, and C/C++, which has an estimated 12 million developers. 

Stylus provides tools for developing smart contracts in performant and secure languages. Any language that compiles down to WebAssembly (WASM) is supported, including Rust and many more. This is because Stylus introduces a co-equal virtual machine that is completely interoperable with the EVM and is designed to execute WASM instead of EVM bytecode. 

The VM does not replace the EVM but rather works together with it to facilitate state transitions and execute respective bytecodes. It is also much more optimized for performance compared to the EVM. 

Additionally, WASM programs are more efficient than Solidity due to decades of compiler development for Rust and C. This enables developers to create complex cryptography and computation tasks that would otherwise be extremely gas-heavy. Furthermore, Solidity contracts and WASM contracts are completely interoperable. Solidity contracts can call Rust contracts freely, and vice versa. If working in Rust, developers have access to a full suite of developer tools and onchain functionality out of the box.

With these new programming languages and the fast WASM VM, developers now have the tools to become more expressive with their coding and push the limits of what they're building onchain. Additionally, the WASM VM introduced by Stylus can significantly reduce gas costs for complex smart contracts, meaning that costs would be substantially lower for computation- and memory-intensive applications with Stylus.  

The latest Stylus mainnet activation on Arbitrum One and Nova aligns with our greater vision of scaling Ethereum. There is so much uncharted territory to explore with Stylus, and we would love for you to be part of this journey.

Building with us

Today, the Stylus ecosystem is full of possibilities for growth and expansion. At launch, the Stylus ecosystem is still in its early stages. While the essential components are in place for getting started, we're excited to foster innovation by expanding the ecosystem with additional developer tooling, abstractions, and features. This means that pioneers will be able to shape and refine Stylus as they actively build with it. 

The many teams building with Stylus today are early adopters of the technology and are actively pushing the limits of what is possible on the EVM. Below are some examples of exciting projects made possible only through Stylus. 

Renegade Finance

Renegade is building an “onchain dark pool,” a new type of privacy-preserving decentralized exchange. Much like dark pools in TradFi, Renegade enables hidden-size trading for high-quality execution with zero MEV, slippage, spread, or price impact. Under the hood, Renegade leverages both multi-party computation (MPC) and zero-knowledge proofs for pre- and post-trade privacy. According to Andrew, Renegade’s founding engineer, the exchange “would not nearly be as fast, cheap, and secure without Stylus.”

Superposition

Superposition’s AMM contract, “Longtail,” is a concentrated liquidity-style AMM that aims to enable seamless cross-chain liquidity while minimizing market risk. Thanks to Stylus, Longtail has been designed to keep all its liquidity centralized in one contract, with only one shared asset (fUSDC) between every pool. The AMM also supports Permit2, allowing users to have more seamless, cheaper interactions with tokens. 

Alex, the founder of Superposition, says, “Stylus marries the best of two worlds: the expressiveness, affordability, and safety of the Rust ecosystem, and the richness of the EVM. We chose Stylus to build the cheapest and safest defi suite on the EVM without compromising on composability. Stylus is the game changer that made it all possible.”

Crypto Valley Exchange 

Stylus provides Crypto Valley Exchange with the tools to leverage Rust, WASM, and LLVM, enabling the creation of cutting-edge smart contracts that are both efficient and fully interoperable with the Ethereum ecosystem. This capability allows the team to implement onchain portfolio margin management for derivatives trading.

Ivan, the CTO of Crypto Valley Exchange, said, “Thanks to Stylus, we can fully utilize the potential of Rust, WASM, and LLVM to create advanced and efficient smart contracts, all while preserving complete interoperability with the entire Ethereum ecosystem. This makes Stylus the only real choice for us to implement fully functional portfolio margin management for derivatives trading onchain.”

Fairblock 

Fairblock is using Stylus to implement MPC schemes such as threshold identity-based encryption, which otherwise would not be feasible using only EVM opcodes. These algorithms unlock the potential to build applications that enable front-running protected orders, PVP gaming, mystery NFTs, coercion-resistant voting, and confidential AI.

Ecosystem Support 

Adopting Stylus is an ecosystem-wide activity, and many players in the web3 space are working to make Stylus more accessible for everyone. 

Some of these partners include: 

• Etherscan: Popular block explorer and analytics platform Etherscan is supporting Stylus contract verification and interaction on supported Arbitrum rollups and orbit chains, increasing trust in and accessibility to Stylus smart contracts.
• OpenZeppelin: As a provider of open-source smart contract libraries and security solutions, OpenZeppelin is building Stylus libraries for Rust, aiming to make development safer and more secure. This will allow developers to accelerate Stylus development.
• Tenderly: A full-stack Web3 infrastructure provider, Tenderly will support Stylus with block discovery, execution, and simulations. Improvements to tracing and virtual testnets for better Stylus compatibility are also on their roadmap.

What’s next

Offchain Labs will continue to work on developing the Stylus SDK and making CLI improvements. We are committed to building products that will stand the test of time in an open, transparent way. 

Setting the stage for Stylus, several events will be available for you to get involved in over the coming weeks. Below are some noteworthy events to keep an eye out for.

Stylus Showcases

Starting the week of Sept. 2, the Arbitrum Foundation will host weekly AMAs with teams building with Stylus. These teams will share their experiences developing with Stylus and discuss what the tooling has been able to unlock for them. 

Mainnet Mint

To celebrate Stylus's launch, The Arbitrum Foundation will also be hosting a mint for the first-ever NFT contract powered by Stylus! This NFT, featuring artwork by artist Jimena Buena Vita, will be available for mint on Sept. 9, 2024.

Stylus Pro Series

Live workshops, planned for the end of September and the end of October, are available for advanced builders who want to use Stylus to build the previously impossible on the EVM. Some use cases include:

• Zero Knowledge Proofs;
• 25519 curve verification and other cryptography methods;
• Fully Homomorphic Encryption;
• Black Scholes modeling for options pricing; and
• Storage proofs.

Stylus Sprint

The Stylus Sprint program is designed to encourage the early development of Stylus smart contracts and tooling, which can ultimately unlock Stylus's potential for the broader crypto community.

A DAO proposal is currently seeking to fund the initiative with rewards of up to 5 million ARB. The proposal is currently seeking feedback from the Arbitrum DAO, and if passed, team applications would begin on Oct. 4.