stylus

On October 2, at 11:30 AM Eastern Time, the Arbitrum Security Committee executed an emergency upgrade on Arbitrum One and Nova, suspending the activation of all new Stylus contracts on both chains, while adding a protective mechanism against BoLD single-step proofs in the dispute system of Arbitrum One. The Arbitrum Foundation stated that this action is part of ongoing proactive security measures aimed at protecting the security and integrity of the network.Stylus allows developers to write smart contracts using languages such as Rust and C++, while maintaining compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, with its programs compiled into WebAssembly format. This suspension primarily targets manually written WASM programs that do not use the standard Stylus compiler toolchain and have not yet been patched by the current version of ArbOS. The Security Committee increased the gas required for activation to the theoretical maximum by calling ArbOwner.setWasmActivationGas(2^64 - 1), making new activations economically unfeasible. Activated Stylus contracts are unaffected and can continue to execute and renew, and the deployment and execution of Solidity contracts are also unrestricted.The newly added BoLD protection allows anyone to pause the settlement from Arbitrum One to Ethereum when two conflicting and accepted answers appear in the same dispute step, which may delay unconfirmed withdrawals to allow the Security Committee to deploy fixes. Officials pointed out that the currently discovered Stylus-related vulnerabilities mainly affect the activity of the chain, such as denial-of-service attacks, and do not jeopardize user funds.

The Arbitrum development team stated that they are introducing zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs into the Arbitrum platform to achieve a multi-proof settlement model. Through ZK proofs, the settlement time of Arbitrum blocks to Ethereum L1 is expected to be reduced from several days to several hours, while enhancing user, cross-chain bridge, and protocol capital efficiency, and maintaining security through the multi-proof mechanism. Related capabilities are aimed at Arbitrum One and dedicated chains based on the Arbitrum platform. Offchain will subsequently submit upgrade proposals to the DAO.Current progress includes: the ability to run the same state transition functions in SP1 zkVM as in optimistic execution, generating ZK proofs for real mainnet block production; Stylus's WASM contracts can be proven alongside Solidity contracts; the team has launched an independent Rust verifier, making ZK proofs a first-class mode alongside standard verification; the BoLD settlement protocol has supported the acceptance of ZK proofs and is endorsed by a fast confirmation committee, while the original dispute games still serve as a fallback path, forming a multi-proof architecture that coordinates ZK proofs, proof committees, and fraud proofs.The team claims to be continuously reducing proof costs and will gradually merge related code into the Nitro main production path. The next steps include further optimizing proofs and shifting to Reth-based execution, completing L1 message inbox proofs, and integrating ZK settlement capabilities into node configurations for on-demand activation across chains.

ChainCatcher news, Arbitrum has initiated a governance vote for the Stylus Sprint program, aimed at encouraging developers to adopt Arbitrum Stylus for developing smart contracts and tools by offering rewards of up to 5 million ARB tokens. The program lasts for one year, with an application period of 8 weeks. Applying teams are required to utilize Stylus technology to showcase their unique use cases and build foundational tools. Project teams must apply through a designated process, and an evaluation committee will screen based on the criteria outlined in the proposals, with a maximum application limit of 1 million ARB. Funds will be disbursed in phases based on project progress to ensure project deployment and long-term maintenance. Arbitrum has set this proposal to private, and the final results will only be viewable after the voting concludes.

ChainCatcher news, Arbitrum officials posted on the X platform stating that Stylus contracts are fully interoperable with Solidity contracts, which means developers can mix and match contracts within the protocol. This means more options, more optimizations, and stronger development capabilities.

ChainCatcher news, Arbitrum announced on its official Twitter that it will collaborate with the Web3 developer education platform HackQuest to launch the Arbitrum Stylus Learning Track on the HackQuest platform, helping developers learn to use Arbitrum Stylus for development from 0 to 1. After completing the learning, developers will also receive a certificate issued jointly by Arbitrum and HackQuest. An AMA will be held later to introduce Arbitrum Stylus and the HackQuest Arbitrum Learning Track.At the same time, Arbitrum will support HackQuest in hosting a series of online and offline developer events globally to build the Arbitrum developer ecosystem and jointly establish a global Web3 developer network. Currently, HackQuest has reached official developer education cooperation with over 10 public chains, including Mantle, Solana, and Arbitrum, and has jointly launched developer education courses and certificates.

ChainCatcher news, Arbitrum announced on its official Twitter that it will collaborate with the Web3 developer education platform HackQuest to launch the Arbitrum Stylus Learning Track on the HackQuest platform, helping developers learn to use Arbitrum Stylus for development from 0 to 1. After completing the learning, developers will also receive a certificate issued jointly by Arbitrum and HackQuest. An AMA will be held later to introduce Arbitrum Stylus and the HackQuest Arbitrum Learning Track.At the same time, Arbitrum will support HackQuest in hosting a series of online and offline developer events globally to build the Arbitrum developer ecosystem and jointly create a global Web3 developer network. Currently, HackQuest has reached official developer education cooperation with more than 10 public chains, including Mantle, Solana, and Arbitrum, and has jointly launched developer education courses and certificates.

ChainCatcher news, Arbitrum has proposed an AIP to activate Arbitrum Stylus on the Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova mainnets and enable the next generation of WebAssembly smart contracts. Stylus is a complement to the EVM (Stylus contracts and EVM contracts are fully interoperable) and is a new programming environment that includes a WebAssembly-based virtual machine, CLI, and a specification SDK that defines patterns and frameworks for writing smart contracts. This allows developers to write smart contracts using new programming languages such as Rust.It is reported that if the Arbitrum DAO approves the AIP, discussions on the proposal will be initiated in the forum, completing the review and remaining code changes, voting on Snapshot to enable Stylus on Arbitrum Sepolia, merging the Stylus branch into the standard Nitro codebase, testing on the public testnet simulating the production environment, and deploying the upgraded on-chain voting on Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova.

ChainCatcher news, Arbitrum Stylus has completed a new upgrade, supporting developers to write smart contracts in C language using the Stylus C-SDK. The tools introduced in Cargo-Stylus will parse Solidity and create initial C language code for smart contracts.Previous report, the Arbitrum development team Offchain Labs announced the launch of Arbitrum Stylus code and the public testnet release. This allows developers to build applications on the Arbitrum Nitro chain using traditional EVM tools and WASM-compatible languages (such as Rust, C, and C++).

ChainCatcher news, the Arbitrum development team Offchain Labs announced on social media that the Arbitrum Stylus code and public testnet have been launched. This allows developers to build applications on the Arbitrum Nitro chain using traditional EVM tools and WASM-compatible languages (such as Rust, C, and C++).Additionally, by improving computational, storage, and memory efficiency, Stylus significantly reduces gas costs and supports new blockchain use cases, such as alternative signature schemes, larger generative art libraries, C++-based games, and previously computation-intensive AI models.

ChainCatcher news, the Arbitrum development team Offchain Labs announced that they have written a complete and effective fraud proof program for the next-generation programming environment Stylus. Stylus allows users to deploy contracts written in their favorite programming languages, including Rust, C, C++, and more. Additionally, it enhances the security of Stylus contracts in WASM using Nitro and expands EVM+ support. Stylus is expected to undergo auditing this year and be ready for production. (source link)