Developers at Arbitrum have expanded language support for smart contracts with a new tool called Stylus. This tool allows for the creation of smart contracts using several popular programming languages. The Offchain Labs team has released the solution's code and launched a publicly available test network.

Arbitrum Stylus enables the use of both traditional EVM tools and WASM-compatible programming languages like Rust, C, and #C++ to build applications on Arbitrum. This significantly reduces gas costs and opens up new use cases for the blockchain, such as C++-based games and AI model computations that were previously unavailable.

This move became possible after the Nitro upgrade, which implemented a transaction authenticity verification system using #WASM languages and allowed for customizing and compiling AVM through compatible tools.

This tool has the potential to greatly expand the capabilities of creating applications on Arbitrum, attracting millions of developers using Rust and C, in addition to traditional Solidity developers.

Stylus ensures full compatibility with traditional #EVM contracts and speeds up task execution. The company is also hosting a hackathon with a $20,000 prize fund and has launched a grant program from the #Arbitrum Foundation for research and development of this solution.