Analyzing Solidity and Vyper for Smart Contracts Programming

After the Ethereum network introduced smart contracts in 2014, it was only a matter of time before a language other than Solidity for smart contract development services was developed. Vyper is one such language that aims to increase the readability and comprehension of the source code for smart contracts. We'll look at the advantages and disadvantages of the programming languages Solidity and Vyper separately.

Understanding Solidity

Solidity is a high-level, Turing-complete programming language that supports smart contract development for several use cases, including decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, and wallets, on the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Influenced by JavaScript and C++, Solidity uses the same multiple inheritance techniques as Python. Solidity is supported by several blockchain systems, including Polkadot and Avalanche while being most closely related to Ethereum.

Ethereum CTO Gavin Wood presented Solidity as a solution to the requirement for a flexible smart contract-based developer environment. The vibrant decentralized ecosystem of applications currently operating on Ethereum was made possible by Solidity. It gave programmers the ability to write smart contracts for a variety of use cases.

Explore the benefits of  Solidity for Smart Contracts Development 

Advantages of using Solidity

• Educational resources and online courses are widely available.
• Remix, an online editor for building smart contracts, is one of the many developer tools available.
• Development suites like Hardhat and Truffle for building, testing, and deploying smart contracts are available.
• Aave and UniSwap, two important providers of blockchain technology, have used Solidity.
• It supports strings and dynamic size arrays.
• Recently, exception handling was added to the repository for Solidity.

Disadvantages of using Solidity

• There is a chance of overflow circumstances or the storage of overly large numbers.
• Numerous contracts that were created using this technology turned out to have significant flaws that were not found during testing and development.

Related Post | Why Choose Solidity for Creating Ethereum Smart Contracts

Understanding Vyper

Vyper, which is a high-level programming language similar to Solidity, was developed especially to increase the security of smart contracts used on blockchains that are EVM-compatible.

The pythonic syntax is used in Vyper programming, hence the serpentine name, to emphasize readability so that developers may quickly identify bugs and weaknesses in their code before sharing contracts.

The security of Vyper's smart contracts is greatly enhanced by the use of strong typing and computational decidability. Vyper variables must all have specified types. So, developers may estimate the maximum gas usage before deploying a contract thanks to the decidability of contracts.

Advantages of using Vyper

• It is easier to start coding for Python coders.
• It attempts to be transparent for readability and security.
• Development tools like Etherscan and Brownie have become more popular recently.
• It is used by DeFi protocols like Curve to generate their contracts.
• It is less susceptible to assaults because of the restrictions on arrays and strings.
• A precise upper bound may be calculated for the gas consumption of any function call.

Disadvantages of using Vyper

• Community support is lacking.
• Modifiers, recursive calls, class inheritance, and dynamic data types are not included in the functionality.
• Many Solidity features are still in development and are not yet accessible in Vyper.

Also, Visit | A Guide to Ensuring Smart Contract Security

What Compromises do Vyper and Solidity make

A Community of Developers

Solidity is a web3 programming language that is far more popular than Vyper only based on numbers. We can estimate the number of developers using each language by quickly searching GitHub for all files written in Vyper (.vy) and all files written in Solidity (.sol). In comparison to the 8.3 million Solidity files on GitHub, there were about 10,300 files created in Vyper at the time this article was produced.

As a result, there are fewer manuals and tools available for Vyper programmers. It will be more difficult to locate community conversations addressing issues you could run across while developing with Vyper outside of the official guide.

Flexibility

According to the literature for Vyper, there are several things you may do with Solidity that are expressly forbidden while using Vyper for coding, hence Vyper is not meant to be a complete replacement for Solidity. As a result, selecting Vyper over Solidity means giving up the flexibility of smart contracts, which restricts the breadth of applications.

Security

Vyper protects developers from developing susceptible code that would allow defects and exploitable attack surfaces to go undiscovered thanks to its many safety features.

Auditability

Smart contract security auditors can quickly read and comprehend what a smart contract is doing due to Vyper code. Thus, it will be clear to everyone who reads your smart contracts how assets will be handled on the blockchain.

Finally, as you become more familiar with Vyper, reading existing smart contracts from other dApps will become easier.

Also, Read | A Definitive List of Top Smart Contract Platforms

Which language to choose between Solidity and Vyper

The decision to choose a single language is not either/or because Vyper and Solidity are compatible. However, Vyper should be used for applications that require strong security guarantees while Solidity should be used for more basic smart contracts that require flexibility.

Since each language has a variety of applications, neither is expressly superior to the other. Vyper is best for applications requiring the highest level of security because of its rigidity and lack of a robust developer community. And novice web3 developers should begin by studying Solidity. 

Connect with our skilled blockchain and smart contract developers for information about smart contract development.