- IOHK is launching two developer environments to enable developers to write, deploy and test smart contracts for Cardano in any programming language.
- The “KEVM” and the “IELE” devnet will promote the early adoption of Cardano.
Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), the development company behind the Cardano blockchain, yesterday announced the introduction of two new development environments that allow developers to write smart contracts for Cardano. The announcement was made during the monthly product update by IOHK.
The ‘KEVM’ devnet will allow developers to implement existing or future Ethereum-based applications written in Solidity on Cardano. This means that over 140,000 smart contracts will be compatible with the Cardano blockchain. The devnet uses a version of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (the runtime environment for smart contracts in Ethereum) that has been verified by K – a framework used to create formally verified software.
This enables developers to define or implement the formal semantics of a programming language in an intuitive and modular way. In addition, Ethereum developers will be able to write DApps in Solidity and use them on Cardano, benefiting from lower fees, enhanced functionality, formally verified security and faster speeds.
The other “devnet”, IELE, aims to enable developers to write code in any programming language and port the resulting functionality to the Cardano blockchain. According to IOHK, the ‘IELE’ will thus be “the first large-scale beta test”, enabling developers who are not blockchain developers to create smart contracts on Cardano without having to learn a blockchain-specific programming language.
This means that blockchain development is open to all capable developers, making it possible to create smart contracts and distributed applications in any non-blockchain-specific language, from Java to C++, Python and Rust. Charles Hoskinson, CEO of IOHK, commented on the release:
Universality is the next piece in the puzzle for mainstream blockchain adoption, which is why we’re focused on removing barriers to the world of writing smart contracts for blockchain, no matter which languages developers actually know. This new access to the world of writing blockchain-based smart contracts, combined with our focus on industry collaboration, means that blockchain technology will finally be able to live up to its inclusive principles, allowing a diverse network of partners and developers to build innovative and potentially world-changing solutions.
Mainstream adoption in the main focus for Cardano
As IOHK further announced, the two devnets will play a similar role for Cardano as developer kits for game consoles, where manufacturers provide early access to developers so that they can start developing their games before the market launch. Both devnets will include a complete set of development tools that allow developers to start building smart contracts for Cardano.
This means that the dApps written with the development environments will be available on Cardano from day one as soon as the smart contract functionality is implemented on Cardano mainnet. Both devnets will be launched as independent networks and will be connected as sidechains to the Cardano mainnet in the first half of the next year.