Blockchain ❤️'s WASM: Chapter Arbitrum
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Arbitrum recently launched Stylus, its WebAssembly (WASM)-based smart contract VM. This brings several benefits like expanded language support, lower costs, customizable precompilers, and interoperability with EVM.
WASM is gaining popularity for its performance, compact size, portability, and language support. Other chains like Polkadot and Cosmos also use it.
However, Stylus has some limitations currently. It only supports C++ and Rust, lacking JavaScript/Python support. The SDKs are still nascent. There's no local testnet or contract verification yet.
Choosing the right language is crucial - a JavaScript/Python eDSL could attract more developers. Performance benchmarks show WASM can be 4-8x faster than EVM. But there's a 128KB contract size limit.
EVM-WASM interoperability is quite comprehensive. Custom precompiles aren't implemented yet. Reentrancy is optional but disabled by default.
Overall, WASM provides a performance boost for Arbitrum against zk-rollups. But EVM remains foundational, with WASM as an "EVM+" supplement for now.