Rust, Graydon Hoare’s creation, is the famous language for creating fast and secure applications. The language is also universally well-liked, earning the top spot in the Stack Overflow Survey 6 years in a row!
It’s no wonder, then, that many major companies, such as Discord, 1Password, Dropbox, and Toyota decided to embrace Rust, the language developed in 2010.
What makes Rust different?
Rust’s design is unique, and crucially, it aims to answer the oldest existing question: how to eat a cake and still have that cake. In the simplest terms, it solved the challenge of having a tool for designing apps that do not compromise on performance while at the same time, save you from potentially dangerous flaws.
Of course, if you need to escape some of that safety, you may. Even though it is highly discouraged, a simple unsafe statement will do the trick.
Another key feature that many programmers always appreciate, is how easy it is to generate documentation. If somebody published a piece of code for others to reuse, you may find documentation for it on docs.rs. Frankly, there are few languages that even match that functionality (Go is one of them, of course).
The Gotchas
Of course, claiming that something is without flaws is delusional. The designer of the language, and the team behind it now, had to make tradeoffs.
One of them is the language’s excessive wordiness. Writing option.as_ref().unwrap().borrow() is a Rustacean’s (that’s how Rust programmers call themselves) constant companion for better or for worse.
Furthermore, the editor support appears to be top-notch, but only on the surface. There’s a JetBrains’s plugin for CLion, an extension for Visual Studio Code (VS Code)… Or is it? Suggestions are often a miss, and the functionality often crashes, and it’s slow.
Overall, there are definitely more shortcomings, and we can’t pretend there aren’t. The optimistic accent is how the wider project handles flaws and challenges. One example is how the community handled one highly requested feature: asynchronous programming.
See for yourself at https://areweasyncyet.rs/. In short, there was a popular movement of programmers to co-create the necessary foundations for the feature.
Rust’s Use Cases
Specifics aside, there are use cases In the same way that we won’t see a supercar making deliveries, or a delivery van race on a track - programming languages have their use cases that they're built for.
Rust excels in all the (most frequently) multi-platform, high-performance scenarios, where security cannot be an afterthought:
- Blockchains
- Browsers
- Operating Systems
- Cybersecurity Products
These all successfully use the airtight language to improve their offering.
There are some scenarios, however, where we have to resort to using C, or C++ instead. Embedded development is one such area. In this case, engineers have to apply solutions that are sometimes older than they are. It’s a sad necessity since memory and CPU speed are a luxury. Though that might be for worse. As a matter of fact, C may have been indirectly responsible for a series of car crashes, and billions of dollars of losses for one automotive company (pages 36, 38, 40, 43).
Sadly, the affair happened before 2010, therefore the only way to produce better code back then was to voluntarily adhere to standards.
In cases of web back-ends, developing them in JavaScript, Java or C# are the best suited tools. It’s an active sacrifice of the app’s performance for quicker iterations and shorter development time. Little do people know, however, that Rust apps make terrific front-end web apps.
Did you know that Figma allows people to create their designs using the super safe language under the hood?
Blockchain projects running based on Rust
Safety, easy multi-platform development, speed, and quality is just what blockchain developers need - and where Rust excels.
For all the enthusiasts out there, you may even find a dedicated newsletter updating everybody on advances of “Rust in Blockchain”. The amount of high-profile projects in this area alone is impressive, just to mention Zcash, and MobileCoin.
We want to highlight different projects, however. Some higher-profiles ones are:
Solana
The project started inNovember 2017 and had one goal from day one. They wanted “a blockchain built from the ground up for scale.”
The story began in 2017, with a scientific paper by Anatoly Yakovenko. Few years down the line, and we have a top project with numerous contributors, and a strong community. Solana and Polkadot are fighting Ethereum on their quest to become the choice for Web3. Will they be successful? Only time will tell.
Question: how do you build something extremely fast, and safe at the same time? The Clear Answer: You develop it in Rust.
Engineers from Geneva, Switzerland, use the programming language to ensure the highest levels of safety and speed. To achieve higher efficiency, the team even restricted the language features available.
The effect? “710,000 transactions per second on a standard gigabit network if the transactions are, on average, no more than 176 bytes.”
Note: The name Solana is “a nod to a small beach town North of San Diego called Solana Beach, where Anatoly, Greg and Stephen [the founders] lived and surfed for three years when they worked for Qualcomm.”
Polkadot
Polkadot, a London-based organization, “envision[s] a Web where our identity and our data is our own – safely secured from any central authority.”
That’s not their only goal either. The team sees their mission being “connecting private and consortium chains, public and permissionless networks, oracles, and future technologies that are yet to be created” as well.
How do they want to do all that? You guessed it: build a solution on top of Rust.
While the team, primarily based in London, explicitly highlights the foundation is Hoare’s child, the project also states that Go and C++ are among the languages in use “making Polkadot accessible to a wide range of developers.”
Hyperledger Sawtooth
If you played “spot the odd one out”, then here is the correct answer. A little different from their colleagues, Hyperledger solves other problems altogether. Whilethe former two are public blockchains, Sawtooth is an “enterprise solution for building, deploying, and running distributed ledgers.”
The company, based in San Francisco, USA, uses Rust to “to give application developers and administrators more control, more flexibility, and greater security for their blockchain networks.” The team switched to Mozilla’s language from… Python.
Guido van Rossum’s creation had one purpose: to facilitate prototyping. After a year, in 2019, the team decided to rewrite the project to Rust, enabling them to ship better code. Teams have “account for all possible error and edge cases”, thus low-quality code will not get a pass from the compiler.
Comparing that to C++, or even Python, the solution will be of higher quality, due to the strictness of the language and its compiler.
Conclusion
But… is Blockchain development, and low-level (advanced operations where speed is a must) development the only things I can do with Rust? No! In fact, full-stack development is not only the domain of JavaScript. Maybe a Nest.js and Angular (JavaScript frameworks) are enterprise favorites. However, nobody says you can’t make an app with Actix Web, and Yew (Rust alternatives to the aforementioned solutions) just as well! If you prefer to keep your current web engineers, then that’s quite alright as well. You may just compile your code to run inside, e.g., a React, Vue or Angular app.
Whatever you are using Rust for, should you want to have a conversation about your project, don't hesitate to get in touch with us here to talk about our Blockchain Development Services. We would love to talk to you.
FAQs
Is Rust a good language for blockchain? ›
As you can notice, Rust programming language has many significant advantages over existing programming languages. It is one of the most popular programming languages suited for blockchain developers.
Is Rust good for blockchain development? ›Rust Language For Blockchain Coding
Many blockchains (e.g., Ethereum or Bitcoin) use C++ functionality to implement such conditions. Considering the above, creating infrastructure in Rust will be more effective. Here are some examples of blockchain usage: Solana blockchain project development service.
...
Pros
- Statically typed Blockchain Programming language - Solidity provides a stable and more flexible coding pattern for smart contracts ;
- User-friendly - Easy-to-use feature of Solidity makes it flexible;
Rust is quickly becoming the go-to programming language for blockchain developers. Part of it is because it's easy for developers to learn and enables users to create secure applications with minimal friction. Also, Rust makes it extremely straightforward for developers to create accurate documentation.
Should I learn Rust or Solidity? ›Solidity is the popular choice for developing decentralized applications on the Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM. On the other hand, Rust is the top priority for developers working on dApp projects based on the Solana blockchain.
Is Rust harder than Solidity? ›Solidity is slower than Rust due to its high level of abstraction. In terms of ease of use, Solidity is easier to learn than Rust as its syntax is more straightforward. Rust is more complex and requires more knowledge of programming principles to be able to use it.
What is the downside of Rust programming? ›Learning Curve and Development
Rust's learning curve is high and in order to understand most of the main part of it, one should be familiar with C++ or any object-oriented language. Also, the speed at which the development of code can be done is not as good as some of its peer languages.
Polkadot
Polkadot is mentioned in the first entry among blockchains that use the Rust programming language. It is a blockchain ecosystem built on smart contracts that has the benefit of interoperability to support web3 trends.
Solidity and Rust are the two main programming languages used by web3 developers to build web3 applications on Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible blockchains and Solana respectively.
What is the best programming language for blockchain 2023? ›Other than Python and JavaScript, C++ is the most popular programming language in the tech world today. Moreover, its amazing features such as move semantics, multithreading, and object-oriented programming, make it one of the most popular languages in the case of Blockchain as well.
Is it worth to learn blockchain in 2023? ›
Blockchain development is among one of the fastest-growing fields in the IT industry. It is one of the top picks to choose from for 2023. I hope this article will help you to understand Blockchain development, tools, and technologies used, salary trends, etc.
What language is Cardano written in? ›In fact, Rust is often compared to C++ in terms of performance, but with stronger security guarantees. This makes it an ideal choice for building blockchain applications that require fast transaction processing, such as payment systems, supply chain management, and asset tracking.
Is it worth learning Rust language? ›Rust facilitates easy scalability and concurrency and is suitable for building heavy applications to meet the increasing tech demands in the modern world. It uses a logical and functional syntax that allows developers to handle low-level programming for IoT (Internet of Things) applications.
Why Rust is good for Web3? ›As a result, Rust encourages writing extremely fast programs without having to compromise security. In addition to being the main language for writing fast Solana smart contracts, Rust is used for programming with Polkadot, Elrond, NEAR, and Zcash.
Why is Rust better than Solidity? ›However, when it comes to developing an application or service, Rust is a more suitable option as it is memory-safe, thread-safe, and provides better performance than Solidity. Rust also provides advanced features like zero-cost abstractions, generics, and trait-based generics, which makes it a better choice.
Is Rust the hardest language to learn? ›Rust is considered difficult to learn by many people. Indeed, when I learned it, I considered it to be the hardest programming language up to that time I've met. And that says something, since I have a habit of learning whatever language I find interesting.
Why is Rust so hard programming? ›So why Rust is so hard? Rust is a systems language. To be a systems PL, it is very important not to hide underlying computer memory management from a programmer. For this reason, Rust pushes programmers to expose many details that would be otherwise hidden in more high-level languages.
Is Solana built on Rust? ›Rust is the most common programming language to write Solana programs with. This quickstart guide will demonstrate how to quickly setup, build, and deploy your first Rust based Solana program to the blockchain.
Is Rust too complicated? ›Rust is difficult. It has a complex syntax and a steep learning curve. It is designed to uniquely solve some very challenging problems in programming. However, as a beginner, using Cuda or MPI on Rust is not very simple compared to the other options like Swift and Go.
Is Rust getting too complicated? ›
It is hard to learn, indeed. Rust is trying to lower the learning curve though teaching materials and good compiler errors (if you think these errors are bad — they have been much worse!). Some of the core concepts around ownership are just tricky to learn, but required for the language to work.
Why is Rust language bad? ›The only reason Rust has unsafe blocks at all is because it achieves something that other systems languages don't even try to (compiler-guaranteed memory safety). In, for example, C or C++, literally all code is unsafe, in the sense of "unsafe" meant by Rust.
Why do programmers like Rust? ›High performance and safety are the features that made Rust so appealing to scientists that started using it to perform heavy data analysis. Rust is blazingly fast, making it an ideal choice for computational biology and machine learning, where you need to process large amounts of data very quickly.
Does Rust programming language have a future? ›With both developers and major technology brands recognizing Rust's potential, it's set to be one of the most used and popular programming languages in 2023 (and beyond).
Does Cardano use Rust? ›Cardano Rust is a modular toolbox of Cardano's cryptographic primitives, a library of wallet functions and a future alternative Cardano node implementation written in Rust.
Why Solana chose Rust? ›If you've read our article about blockchain programming languages, you know that the smart contracts on Solana are developed either in C or Rust. Most projects in fact choose Rust, simply because it is safer and easier to use.
Is Rust good for smart contracts? ›Rust is an ideal smart contract language: It is type safe, memory safe, and free of undefined behaviors. It generates small binaries because it doesn't include extra bloat, like a garbage collector, and advanced optimizations and tree shaking remove dead code.
What is the future of Rust language? ›1: Rust will become more standardized and grow faster
The core language is currently being adapted to a wide variety of projects. It's beginning to stabilize, and the future of Rust as a powerful language is bright.
Rust programming language is the core of Solana blockchain development. It supports performance-critical services with no garbage collector or runtime. This memory-efficient programming language can easily integrate with other programming languages. Thus, Rust enables smooth engineering of the blockchain.
Does Polkadot use Rust? ›Rust has always been an integral part of the Polkadot ecosystem. It is the foundation of Substrate - the blockchain framework Polkadot and all of its parachains are built upon - and a large portion of the Polkadot community are amazing Rust developers.
Does Ethereum use Rust? ›
Solidity and Rust are the two main programming languages used by web3 developers to build web3 applications on Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible blockchains and Solana respectively.
Is Rust used for Solana? ›Rust is the most common programming language to write Solana programs with. This quickstart guide will demonstrate how to quickly setup, build, and deploy your first Rust based Solana program to the blockchain.
Do I need to learn Rust for Solana? ›Since the Solana codebase is in Rust, it's important to understand the language. Here are some learning references: The Book. Rust By Example.
Is Rust actually better than C? ›Rust is better in memory safety. C++ is better in terms of compile-time and pointers. Rust is better in framework support, while C++ has better libraries than Rust. Object-oriented programming and game development are better in C++.
Is Rust good enough? ›Is Rust a good language for Cyber Security? Definitely thanks to its memory safety, Rust is a recommended language if you want to write software in a safe way. If you want to defend/attack low level components of a system (Memory, CPU, etc.) then it is highly recommended to use a low level language like Rust.
Which blockchains run on Rust? ›Polkadot
Polkadot is mentioned in the first entry among blockchains that use the Rust programming language. It is a blockchain ecosystem built on smart contracts that has the benefit of interoperability to support web3 trends.
So by choosing Rust, which is a harder language to learn than Solidity and is much more likely to be used by professional programmers, they are hoping to attract developers who can build custom, scalable programs.
What language does Cardano use? ›Haskell. Haskell is the fundamental language for Plutus. It is a programming language used by Cardano for its smart contract creation. Haskell also regulates Marlowe, a domain-specific language for creating Cardano's financial smart contracts.
Is Rust harder to learn than C? ›There is no question that Rust is far easier to use than C++. It also has a significantly lower learning curve, along with extensive community support, libraries, tools, documentation, and additional resources that newcomers to Rust can take advantage of when they are first learning how to use the language.
What is the best coding language for Solana? ›The most common Solana Blockchain programming language is Rust.
How hard is Rust programming? ›
Rust is difficult. It has a complex syntax and a steep learning curve. It is designed to uniquely solve some very challenging problems in programming. However, as a beginner, using Cuda or MPI on Rust is not very simple compared to the other options like Swift and Go.