Interpreting Arbitrum's Major Move: Can the Newly Launched Programming Environment Stylus Surpass EVM?

Original source: Offchain Labs

Original compilation: Moni, Odaily Planet Daily

On February 7, the Arbitrum development team Offchain Labs announced that it will launch the next-generation programming environment Stylus for Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova later this year. Stylus allows developers to deploy applications using their preferred programming languages (including Rust, C, and C++) through WebAssembly smart contract capabilities, enabling them to run alongside EVM programs on Arbitrum.

More importantly, Offchain Labs stated that Stylus is an order of magnitude faster, can reduce costs, and is fully interoperable with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, even referring to it as an upgraded version of the Ethereum Virtual Machine, "EVM+". Can Stylus truly surpass EVM?

Stylus: Beyond EVM Equivalence

With the mainnet launch in August 2021, Arbitrum One became the only EVM-equivalent Rollup with valid fraud proofs, meaning that things that could previously be done on Layer 1 can now be safely executed on Layer 2, with faster speeds and lower costs. EVM equivalence is essential for any general-purpose Rollup technology and has made a vibrant ecosystem of decentralized applications and protocols on Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova possible.

However, achieving EVM equivalence is not the ultimate goal for Arbitrum, but rather a starting point. From the beginning, Arbitrum technology has maintained equivalence with EVM, but it quickly realized that it could do much more. Thus, Arbitrum provided a "paradigm definition" and called it "EVM+". The launch of Stylus is undoubtedly the first step in building this vision and marks a new phase in Arbitrum's development— a general programming environment and WASM virtual machine.

For users of Stylus, deploying programs written in popular programming languages—such as Rust, C, C++, etc.—to Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova will become very convenient, and they can run in parallel with existing Solidity dApps on the Arbitrum blockchain.

Above: A program written in Rust

From game development to social media, Stylus can make the transition to Web3 easier, allowing developers to build on Arbitrum without needing to understand the principles of the Solidity programming language, and they can use the tools they already know and love without worrying about how those tools prefer to code.

For experienced Web3 developers, there is no longer a need to choose between Ethereum and other Layer 1s. Whether seeking a one-to-one experience with traditional Solidity DeFi applications or validating zero-knowledge proofs in Rust for the next generation of Zk Rollups, Arbitrum can be one of the best choices.

This is because programs written in different languages can be seamlessly combined, contracts never need to know what language another is using, and users certainly do not need to—so everything speaks through the product.

Faster Dapps, Lower Fees

Stylus not only expands the way people write decentralized programs but also optimizes performance, making program processing faster. With last year's Nitro upgrade, Arbitrum has already seen a tenfold performance improvement. With Stylus, performance will see further enhancements. Compared to decentralized applications on Arbitrum written in languages like Rust or programs developed in Solidity and Vyper, Stylus is nearly an order of magnitude faster.

Stylus can also significantly reduce transaction fees, ushering in a new era of high-computation applications on the blockchain across various fields. When combined with the cost-saving data features of Arbitrum Nova, decentralized games built on Stylus will receive effective support, while DeFi, DAOs, and other crypto use cases will also enjoy efficient services on Arbitrum One, as Stylus is fully integrated into both Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova blockchains.

Low-cost computing can provide developers with powerful programming freedom, which is also why the Ethereum community has been committed to accelerating EVM, mainly involving:

1. Occasionally adding special smart contracts called precompiles;
2. Effectively executing specific tasks like computing hashes.

With Stylus, users will be able to create their own precompiles:

AC Precompile

If a zero-knowledge proof team needs to build a brand new matching curve, or an alt-Layer 1 bridge requires an unusual hashing algorithm, they can simply deploy a cryptographic library as a custom precompile. Any cryptographic system, any reference implementation, just like it is the native SHA 2 of EVM, Layer 3, and even machine learning applications can benefit from it.

For Ethereum researchers, the AC precompile feature of Stylus will be very valuable, as they can use Stylus to design and iterate EIP precompiles without needing to set up their own testnet, and EVM will be pleased to see the key role Arbitrum plays in its development. Many breakthroughs made by Arbitrum are also consistent with eWASM, which is a Layer 1 plan to add WASM to EVM.

How It Works

In August 2022, the Nitro upgrade changed Layer 2.

Arbitrum validators began running Ethereum's most popular execution client, Geth, and verifying fraud in WebAssembly. For the first time in history, Layer 2 could run at the speed of a native blockchain, occasionally switching to the slower WASM, perhaps just to prove that it was time to defeat potential attackers (which is rarely seen after the merge).

Stylus is the next natural step in Arbitrum's evolution. With Nitro, Arbitrum's fraud proofs can execute trusted WASM, and validators must agree that Geth is an honest program and that its behavior is appropriate. While this is a sufficient foundation for a permissionless EVM network, it is also what Ethereum and all Geth-based Layer 2s are currently doing, but achieving scale requires taking the next step: proving fraud against untrusted WASM.

In the Stylus model, users compile their programs into WASM and then convert them on-chain into a format that is execution-restricted and securely enforced. Through the WASM sandbox, Arbitrum can run user programs at speeds close to that of a native blockchain, with the same security guarantees relied upon by web browsers rendering web pages, and malicious programs will terminate in a way that "can be proven on-chain without calling EVM."

When a transaction calls an EVM contract, Geth executes and returns the result. If that EVM contract happens to make a subcall to a WASM program, then Stylus will intervene and compute that part of the result.

EVM still exists and will remain exactly as it was before. Stylus will not replace EVM but will enhance it.

Everything Arbitrum does is fully scalable, which is why Stylus is referred to as "EVM+".