The best languages for building on blockchain in 2023 — Here are our picks!
The hype surrounding blockchain and Web3 isn’t dying anytime soon. Whether you agree with the ethos of decentralized internet or remain skeptical about blockchain, you might be wondering what sort of languages or tech skills will be valuable for this new iteration of the internet.
Well, the good news is that many languages you already know out there can be used in blockchain development. Moreover, newer languages specific to smart contracts — essential building blocks of decentralized applications (DApps) — are relatively easy to learn, provided you have some basic coding skills. This post looks at some of the best programming languages for building Web3 in 2023.
Best programming languages for building Web3
Let’s explore some of the best blockchain programming languages and what features you need to know about each of them.
1. Solidity
Solidity is the first candidate in any list of the best blockchain development languages. It’s the most popular language for choice for writing and deploying smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. You can use Solidity to write and deploy smart contracts on other Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible chains, such as Avalanche and Binance Smart Chain.
Solidity is an object-oriented and Turing-complete language with familiar features that you find in C++, JavaScript, and Python. You’ll find learning Solidity relatively easy if you have a solid understanding of these languages. Despite its popularity with EVM-based chains, Solidity doesn’t provide detailed documentation, and the Solidity-based smart contracts are vulnerable to numerous hacks.
Currently, thousands of Solidity-based DApps are hosted on Ethereum. Some of the most popular ones include Uniswap, an automated market marker (AMM)-based decentralized exchange (DEX), and MakerDAO, a DeFi lending platform.
2. Rust
Rust language has quickly become the favorite language among Web3 developers, owing to its distinctive features that allow developers to save time and energy in coding. It has persistently ranked the most-loved language in surveys conducted by Stack Overflow, with more than 80% of developers saying they would want to keep using it.
One of the main reasons why developers love Rust is because it’s superfast, memory-safe, and easy to learn. Some blockchain platforms using Rust in their ecosystems include Polkadot, Solana, Near protocol, Elrond, and Hyperledger Sawtooth. Like every programming language, Rust has some downsides as well. For example, while it’s superfast, its compile time is somehow slower when compared to its peer language.
Currently, most Rust-based projects are built on top of a Substrate software development kit (SDK). The Substrate SDK grants the developers access to a rich and interoperable ecosystem for building Polkadot-based parachains and DApps, such as Kusama, Acalar Network, and Moonbeam. Other DApps outside the Polkadot ecosystem and based on Rust include NEARCrowd, a decentralized service that allows users to earn NEAR tokens by completing some tasks, and Raydium Protocol, a non-custodial DEX on the Solana blockchain.
3. Go
Go is a compiled multi-threaded language based on the C language and developed internally at Google. It’s extremely fast, efficient, and easy to maintain. Go provides the advantages required for distributed systems to handle multiple aspects of the blockchain ecosystems concurrently. Examples of blockchain platforms that use Go include Cosmos, Hyperledger Fabric, GoChain, and Loom Network. Although efficient and straightforward to use, Go needs more storage to convert the source code into binaries than its peer languages like Rust, potentially increasing memory usage.
The Cosmos blockchain, designed to be an autonomous and interoperable blockchain ecosystem, is one of the most popular blockchains using Go as its base language. Some of the DApps running on top of the Cosmos ecosystem include Fetch.AI, a wallet for interacting with Cosmos-based chains, and Band Protocol, a Web3 data provider. Axie Infinity is one of the most common DApps outside the Cosmos ecosystem built using Go.
4. JavaScript
Like Rust, JavaScript has also consistently topped Stack Overflow’s developers’ survey, and for a good reason. JavaScript is versatile, flexible, and essential for creating interactive web applications. Thanks to NodeJS, JavaScript’s runtime environment, JavaScript allows developers to build highly capable and creative Web3 applications.
Since the JavaScript source code is viewable to users, attackers can use it for malicious purposes. In addition, some browsers may interpret the JavaScript source code differently. JavaScript has all the ingredients for building DApps with continuous improvements in its feature set and libraries, such as NodeJS, web3.js, and ether.js. Some of the most popular DApps built using JavaScript include MetaMask, a leading Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-based non-custodial wallet, and OpenSea, a decentralized marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
5. C++
Even though C++ is perhaps considered one of the oldest coding languages, many Web3 developers still respect it. C++ is quite flexible and interacts perfectly with the internal mechanisms of blockchain, providing full control over the processor and memory resources. C++ was originally used to code Bitcoin, but today developers use it to implement various blockchain networks, including EOS, Stellar, Ripple, and Litecoin.
Despite its impressive history, C++ lacks mechanisms for addressing memory consumption issues when it comes to pointers. It also lacks an efficient garbage collection mechanism that automatically filters out unnecessary data structures. C++ is largely used to build cryptocurrencies like Stellar (XLM), Ripple (XRP), and Litecoin.
6. Move
Move is a Rust-based language for writing safe and verified smart contracts initially developed by the Facebook team to power the Diem blockchain. It’s a flexible and platform-agnostic language that enables common software libraries, tooling, and developer communities across diverse blockchain ecosystems with vastly different data and execution approaches.
The vision of Move is to become the “JavaScript of Web3” when it comes to the ubiquity and allow DApp developers to quickly write and deploy safe codes for their assets. Aptos and Sui are some blockchain platforms using Move for their smart contracts. However, despite these benefits, Move has few resources and libraries compared to other languages, such as JavaScript or Solidity.
Some of the most common DApps already being built using Move language include PancakeSwap, a DEX protocol on the Aptos blockchain, and Hippo, a liquidity aggregator on the Aptos blockchain.
Conclusion
Before you select your preferred language for Web3 and start learning it, you’ll need to do some research about the language. There are tons of coding languages now, all claiming to be doing different programming aspects the best way. This can be overwhelming.
You’ll also need to do a little research about the blockchain platform that will host your DApps. For example, you may need to assess which platform — whether layer 1(L1) or layer 2 (L2) — has sufficient liquidity or total value locked (TVL) to host your DApp. However, this may be challenging in cases where you want your DApp to leverage liquidity on different chains.
With the current Web3 environment increasingly becoming multi-chain, you need an interoperable solution that is not only secure but also aligns with the decentralization ethos. Analog network is a universal omni-chain interoperability protocol secured by a novel proof-of-time (PoT) protocol that you could leverage to unify liquidity across different chains.
The platform provides a decentralized network of validators and a suite of software development kits (SDKs) that enables seamless composability between heterogeneous chains. As a DApp developer, you can build your application on the best blockchain for your use case while being able to access assets, applications, and even users in every other Analog-connected chain.
