Vyper: The Simple Secure Smart Contract Language

Vyper: The Simple Secure Smart Contract Language Vyper is a promising smart contract language focusing on simplicity and security with a lot of support as I will show. Design Vyper has minimal features to make code quickly understandable and easy to audit. This also makes formal verification easier. Problematic features like inheritance, overloading and recursion are not included. Here is a simple Vyper program showing some basic types and the similarity to Python: dapp_address: public(address)asset_name: public(bytes[64])token_price: public(uint256) @publicdef __init__(the_dapp_address: address, the_asset_name: bytes[64], the_token_price: uint256): self.dapp_address = the_dapp_address self.asset_name = the_asset_name self.token_price = the_token_price @public@constantdef getDappAddress() -> address: return self.dapp_address @public@constantdef getAssetName() -> bytes[64]: return self.asset_name @public@constantdef getTokenPrice() -> uint256: return self.token_price @public@constantdef getClientAddress() -> address: return msg.sender @public@constantdef getBlockTimestamp() -> timestamp: return block.timestamp @public@constantdef isEven(some_number: uint256) -> bool: return (some_number % 2 == 0) Note that functions are private by default and that functions are made public with a Python decorator like syntax. KVyper Formally specifying the semantics of programming languages avoids many possible bugs. It is arguably true that all smart contract languages should be formally specified. The KVyper project is developing a formal specification for Vyper using the K Framework programming language design tools. Furthermore, the K Framework automatically generates conforming compilers from formal language specifications! Imagine formally verified smart contracts built with formally specified compilers. That is possible with Vyper. Support The Ethereum Foundation and many others organizations support Vyper. Vitalik Buterin and many other blockchain notables are fans of Vyper as well. Conclusion The simplicity and security of Vyper may make it the right tool for many smart contract applications. Its agreeableness with formal methods is also promising. The smart design and wide support Vyper enjoys should continue to ensure a bright future. Feedback Feel free to leave any comments or questions below. You can also contact me by email at [email protected] or by clicking any of these icons: Acknowledgements I would like to thank IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong) for funding this effort. License This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International License.