What is Arbitrum Stylus? Arbitrum Stylus is the next update of Arbitrum after the Nitro & One update. Stylus is a complex and landmark update to Arbitrum after its success. So what is Arbitrum Stylus and what is interesting about it? Let’s find out together in the article below.
To better understand Stylus, people can refer to some articles as follows:
- What is Layer 2? Complete Guide to Layer 2 Solutions
- What is Layer 3? Overview of Layer 3 Solutions
- What is Arbitrum (ARB)? Arbitrum Cryptocurrency Overview
- What is Danksharding? All About Danksharding & Ethereum’s EIP 4844
What is Arbitrum Stylus?
Arbitrum’s current landscape
Arbitrum is currently the Optimistic Rollup platform and is also the Layer 2 platform with the largest TVL on the market today. Achieving this success is certainly not easy as Arbitrum has continuously upgraded the network every time the network shows signs of overload.
With the current success and to continue to maintain their position Arbitrum cannot stop but they continue to introduce to the community the 2 latest updates Stylus & Orbit with many upgrades, developments and changes. turning point for the network.
Returning to the present, when fees on Ethereum are showing signs of not cooling down, the gas level is mostly maintained at 25 or more, accompanied by the number of users on Arbitrum still actively active even though the retroactive program has been discontinued. This led to transaction fees on Arbitrum continuing to increase, as when Arbitrum organized the Arbitrum Odyssey program, leading to the One network being clogged and having to upgrade to Nitro.
With the current situation, it is understandable that the Stylus update will replace Nitro.
Overview of Arbitrum Stylus
Stylus: Beyond EVM Equivalence
Stylus allows developers to build protocols, projects or Dapps on Arbitrum One or Arbitrum Nova using many different programming languages such as Rust – an extremely popular language used on Solana, Polkadot, Near Protocol, Aptos, Sui,… C, C++ and many other languages. This helps the Arbitrum ecosystem expand further.
Arbitrum’s goal is to help developers develop protocols and DApps in all the programming languages they write and love. Developers will no longer have to differentiate between Ethereum, Layer 2, non-EVM Blockchain,… but all will be present at Arbitrum.
Faster protocols with cheaper fees
If Arbitrum Nitro has optimized Call Data to make the performance of the Arbitrum surfing network 10 times faster and cheaper, the Stylus update will once again continue to do that. Transaction fees on the Arbitrum network are expected to return to the newly updated original Arbitrum Nitro level and be even lower to continue competing with Optimism’s Bedrock.
You can read more about Optimis’ Bedrock in the article What is Bedrock? Bedrock’s Working Mechanism on Optimism to see how fiercely Arbitrum and Optimism are competing.
Arbitrum emphasized that with Stylus, Protocols & Dapps on Arbitrum built in the Rust programming language will be much faster than Protocols & Dapps written in Sodility or Vyper. Stylus will greatly support protocols and operations that use a lot of computing power in a short time such as complex DeFi protocols such as Options, Flash Loan,…
The fact that Stylus will also be deployed on Arbitrum Nova helps games that work on Nova to have extremely good scalability.
Change application execution
Arbitrum found that Geth is a popular, honest executable and works well for an EVM environment but with the expectation of better scalability, faster transaction speeds, cheaper transaction fees then Arbitrum decided to add WASM for different cases.
In essence, Arbitrum does not change the EVM execution environment but only makes it more efficient and secure.
Build more virtual machines
Because there are additional programming languages, Arbitrum Stylus needs a new execution environment in addition to the highest level EVM environment. That’s why Arbitrum has launched a new concept, EVM +, also known as EVM Plus.
Stylus launch roadmap
Stylus is expected to be released by the end of 2023.
Some pros and cons of Stylus
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Advantage |
Defect |
|---|---|
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By continuing to optimize data calls to send to Layer 1, transaction fees on Arbitrum will continue to be cheaper. |
Optimizing call data is not a long-term solution. Too much optimization will also affect the security and decentralization of the network. |
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Support for many programming languages will also be a launching pad for the Arbitrum ecosystem to continue to expand. |
The addition of executable applications still leaves a question mark about their effectiveness in real life. |
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Developers can easily operate and develop on Arbitrum |
– |
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With Stylus, complex DeFi projects and Gaming projects will benefit the most. |
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Combination of EIP 4488, EIP 4844 and Stylus
The above two updates from Ethereum promise to continue to improve transaction fees on Arbitrum’s network in particular and Layer 2 Rollup in general such as:
- EIP 4488: This update reduces gas fees for Layer 2 and increases blocks for Layer 2 sent to Layer 1, which will definitely help reduce transaction fees on Arbitrum with Stylus in the short term.
- EIP 4844 or Proto Danksharding
promises to bring a new data type to replace call data, making Layer 2 fees much cheaper than EIP 4488. In the medium and long term, Danksharding will still be the endgame for Layer 2.
Distinguishing Offchain Labs’ Product Lines
Offchain Labs has built a diverse ecosystem of different technologies to suit projects and developers with different needs:
- Arbitrum One, Nitro & Stylus: These are Layer 2 platforms based on Optimistic Rollup technology, often suitable for Finance projects. Arbitrum One was the first version released then upgraded to Arbitrum Nitro and Arbitrum Nitro continued to upgrade to Arbitrum Stylus.
- Arbitrum Orbit: Are Layer 3 platforms built on the Optimistic Rollup platform above. Arbitrum Orbit has freedom of choice regarding scalability and data availability.
- Arbitrum Nova: Is a Layer 2 platform using AnyTrust technology with minimal security from Ethereum but has much greater scalability than using Optimistic Rollup.
It can be seen that each product built by Offchain Labs targets different market niches. Arbitrum with Optimistic Rollup technology is suitable for the DeFi segment, Arbitrum Nova is suitable for the NFT, Social and Gaming segments. Arbitrum Orbit will be suitable for Dapps specializing in NFT, Trading, Gaming and Social.
Summary
Arbitrum Stylust is definitely an upgrade worth waiting for in the near future. Will the price of ARB explode after a successful update? Hopefully through this article everyone can understand more about what Arbitrum Stylus is?
