vyper

Sure, but I'm not aware of any language with an optimizer that minimizes permanent storage (for example). The gas model has been forced to be a close representation of actual costs, because last year it wasn't close enough, and someone took advantage of that to launch denial of service attacks. Incidentally, last year someone wrote an Idris backend compiling to EVM for their doctoral thesis. They concluded that it had some benefits but not as much as they expected. [1] There's an effort in progress to migrate from the existing EVM to a modified webassembly [2], which would allow usage of existing languages, and potentially improve performance significantly. It's still experimental and may or may not work out, but seems to be making good progress. [3] With the existing EVM there are new languages in development that may improve matters, in

I totally agree with you about Solidity. If you're interested in developing a better language for smart contracts, check out Viper (https://github.com/ethereum/viper). Although development is kind of slow right now because Vitalik is the only one who merges pull requests.

This new language for Ethereum by Vitalik is exactly what you said: https://github.com/ethereum/viper

There are lots of different languages targeting EVM. The (IMO) most promising so far is https://github.com/ethereum/viper

I don't think it's very important. There are several other languages that can compile down to EVM bytecode. A cool one is Viper (https://github.com/ethereum/viper), which is NOT Turning complete, but decidable. This makes it easier to reason about the correctness of the code, and formally proving that your code is correct.

Nobody prevents you to write contracts in a more restrictive language. For example: https://github.com/ethereum/viper Or create your own. I am sure the creators of Solidity are aware of its limitations and quirks. But as far as I can tell they felt they had to ome up with something fast. And it grew from there. But as I said: Feel free to create your own language for the EVM if Solidity does not fit your needs or requirements. With a system allowing Turing completenes it should be possible to create a language that removes Turing completeness (for more security). It would be impossible the other way round.

One of the main Ethereum co-founders is working on a new experimental contract language targeting the Ethereum Virtual Machine called Viper which still seems to be under relatively active development[1]. Why pick Solidity if Viper and other languages like Low-level Lisp-like Language (LLL) by Consensys[2] are around the corner? Or is this just a matter of language flavour similar to how anybody can pick from a plethora of languages targeting the JVM (Clojure, Scala, Java, etc.)? [1] https://github.com/ethereum/viper [2] https://media.consensys.net/an-introduction-to-lll-for-ether...

Great explanation! I would also add that the code does not necessarily have to be turing complete. There is a new language that complies to EVM bytecode that is decidable (not turing complete) https://github.com/ethereum/viper It's a little less expressive, which makes it safer. Easier to reason about the code, for example)

Turing-complete language is just the base layer. You could build more limited languages (decidable languages) on top, which are more appropriate for smart contracts. There is a new decidable language that compiles to EVM bytecode: https://github.com/ethereum/viper Visually it looks similar to Python. The language is not turing complete, and one of the advantages of this is it's easier write bug free code and easier to verify that the code is doing what you think it's doing. The reason why the entire EVM is turing complete (and not more limited) is because making it decidable instead is harder than making it Turing complete and would have made the protocol more complex: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper#computatio... A Turing-complete language is base layer: you can build any paradigm you want on top.

Solidity is the most widely adopted language, but there are other choices including Serpent (Python-like)and LLL (lisp-like). A few developers I know use Serpent because it is simple and stable (meaning it has not been changed or updated for a while, unlike Solidity which they say is continually being tweaked in a manner that can be aggravating). Interestingly, Vitalik's preferred language (say for prototyping Casper algorithms) is Python. He created Serpent and is now working on Viper, which sounds like a next-generation Serpent. Viper is being implemented in Python3. You can see the work in progress at: https://github.com/ethereum/viper