Arbitrum has activated the Stylus update on the mainnet: smart contracts in Rust and C++

The Offchain Labs team and the Arbitrum DAO community announced the successful activation of a large-scale Stylus update on the Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova main networks. The upgrade introduces a fundamentally new paradigm of multi-language on-chain development (MultiVM): for the first time in the history of leading Ethereum L2, programmers can deploy highly efficient smart contracts in Rust, C and C++ side by side with traditional Solidity contracts. The update has already been called the largest technological breakthrough in the ecosystem since the launch of Nitro.

How does WebAssembly technology reduce commissions for complex calculations?

The key core of Stylus is the integration of the WebAssembly virtual machine (WASM). Unlike the classic EVM, which interprets bytecode with high memory overhead, Stylus contracts are compiled directly into native machine code. This provides an increase in the speed of calculations by more than an order of magnitude and reduces gas consumption by up to 10–100 times while maintaining the cryptographic security of Ethereum. Thanks to this, complex operations – such as zero-knowledge proofs, cryptographic verifiers and on-chain hedging algorithms – become economically feasible for mass use.

Is full-composability maintained with existing Solidity-contracts?

The Stylus architecture provides full two-way composability. A contract written in Rust can seamlessly call an existing Solidity smart contract (such as a Uniswap V3 pool or an Aave lending position) and vice versa, all within one indivisible transaction. Developers do not need to rewrite the established business logic of projects: they can optimize only narrow resource-intensive sections of Rust code, while maintaining familiar ERC-20 interfaces and decentralized management standards.

How will Stylus change-l2-competition-and-attract-web2-developers?

According to analysts, Stylus removes a key barrier to entry into the blockchain industry for millions of traditional web2 engineers who did not speak the niche language Solidity. The ability to write secure smart contracts in the widely adopted Rust will attract new talent from the high-volume fintech, gaming and machine learning sectors. Against the backdrop of intensifying competition from Base and ZK networks, Arbitrum is confidently betting on technological leadership, turning into a universal environment for decentralized computing of the new generation.