Arbitrum wants to attract new developers to its ecosystem. On Sept. 3, Arbitrum launched its Stylus upgrade on mainnet, enabling developers to build applications using popular WebAssembly-compatible programming languages, including Rust, C, and C++. Stylus is now supported by the Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova networks, and is also available to developers using the Arbitrum Orbit tech stack. Arbitrum One is a general-purpose Layer 2 solution, while Arbitrum Nova is optimized for applications requiring a high volume of low-cost transitions such as gaming and social protocols. Stylus converts smart contracts written in Rust, C, and C++ into WebAssembly, a coding easily run by web browsers. These languages are more efficient than Solidity, the native coding language for Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts — which Stylus continues to support. “Stylus is… a new technical implementation that allows developers to build smart contracts in Rust, C, and C++,” Arbitrum said. “Stylus meets the growing need for performant and secure smart contract languages, while simultaneously expanding the design space for increasingly expressive on-chain applications.” “There are an estimated 20,000 Solidity developers, compared to 3.5 million Rust developers and 10 million C++ developers,” the upgrade’s proposal said. “Developers can use their preferred programming language, all interoperable with each other, on any Arbitrum chain, with Stylus." The deployment of Stylus was approved by ArbitrumDAO with 99.1% support in April. Arbitrum claims that Stylus offers more efficient solutions for complex smart contracts than Solidity, offering computation and memory savings of orders of magnitude for highly technical contracts. Arbitrum is the largest Ethereum Layer 2 by total value locked (TVL), currently boasting $14.1 billion or 40% of combined L2 TVL, according to L2beat. Arbitrum noted that several Orbit chains have already utilized Stylus on testnet implementations, claiming that the upgrade facilitated the creation of dApps which “would have previously been impossible or impractical.” Examples include Renegade, a decentralized exchange using dark pools to unlock advanced privacy-preserving features, and Superposition, an on-chain order book protocol. Fairblock, an encryption layer, Crypto Valley Exchange, a DeFi options and futures exchange, and OpenZeppelin, a web3 infrastructure provider, have also implemented Stylus. Arbitrum ecosystem news Stylus’ launch follows a big month for the Arbitrum ecosystem. On Aug. 14, Offchain Labs, the development team behind Arbitrum, launched an incubator division tasked with nurturing projects within the Arbitrum ecosystem. Two days later, ArbitrumDAO approved the introduction of an ARB staking mechanism alongside a liquid staking token (stARB). On Aug. 27, Ondo Finance deployed its USDY token on Arbitrum. USDY is a yield-bearing stablecoin that accrues interest from collateral in the form of U.S. treasury assets and bank demand deposits. Arbitrum is also gearing up for its upcoming Security Council elections. The security council comprises 12 external stakeholders and controls a multisig that can override the network’s transaction fault proofs in the event of a bug or emergency. The election will take place between September and November 2024. The price of ARB is down 3.3% over the past 24 hours, according to The Defiant's crypto price feeds. Read More: Privacy-Focused Nillion Network Integrates with Arbitrum