Smart Contracts Developer Salary in 2024

Smart Contracts

What Is a Smart Contract?

It would be the self-executing program that gets us to do whatever is necessary to conclude an agreement or contract. Once it is completed, the record of transactions is logged and no reversal in activity is possible. Think of a vending machine – put in the right amount of money and hit the button for your item and the program (I like to think of it as a smart contract) turns on that machine to dispense the desired item.

Smart contracts let trusted transactions and agreements be executed among distributed, anonymous parties without some central authority, judicial system, or other external mechanisms needed to enforce the rules.

History of Smart Contracts

Nick Szabo, a US-born computer scientist who created a Bitcoin-like form of currency called ‘Bit Gold’ a decade before Bitcoin was invented, was the first to suggest smart contracts in 1994. He defined smart contracts as ‘digital mechanisms which perform the terms of a contract’.

Some of Szabo’s predictions are ones that we will take for granted in the seemingly near future, but which were not taken up at the time of publication of his paper, because the technology, essentially the distributed ledger, was not available.

The blockchain technology of Satoshi Nakamoto was published in a dated whitepaper in 2008 with Bitcoin – they could henceforth never be referenced in another block. Five years later, the emergence of sophisticated technologies themselves became the trigger for the growing smart contract era. One blockchain block could not be referenced in another one After five years, the Ethereum blockchain platform implemented smart contracts useable in practice. Ethereum remains one of the most popular platforms for implementing smart contracts today.

Smart Contract Uses

Since they encode agreements, smart contracts can be used for just about anything. One of the simplest pacts is to ensure contractual performance between two parties: if I send you something, you send me the payment. Let’s say a manufacturer needs a large shipment of raw materials and the supplier is demanding payment upfront. Both parties have to trust the other won’t swindle them. So, the manufacturing company sets up the payments in smart contracts, while the supplier sets up the shipment. Then the terms of the agreement – however the two businesses decide them – ensure that the money goes to the supplier after shipment or delivery.

Smart contracts could be used to conduct real estate transactions or stock and commodity trades, to settle loans or implement corporate governance mechanisms, and to handle supply-chain contracts or even arbitrate dispute resolution or healthcare scenarios.

Smart Contract Pros and Cons

The main advantage of smart contracts is analogous to the advantage embedded in the blockchain: they cut out the middleman. Other benefits of the technology are:

• Efficiency: They speed up contract execution
• Accuracy: There can be no human error introduced
• Immutability: The programming cannot be altered

Some of the downfalls of smart contracts are:

• Permanent: They cannot be changed if there are mistakes
• Human factor: They rely on you (the programmer) to get the code right so that the intended actions will indeed be executed!
• Holes: There are small openings in the code that present an opportunity for bad-faith contracts to be executed.

History of Solidity

If you’re active in the Ethereum community or blockchain space in general, chances are you have heard of Solidity, the most commonly used programming language for developing smart contracts on the Ethereum platform. But what led to Solidity becoming the programming language for contract development on the world’s second-largest blockchain? In this article, we’ll take a retrospective look into the history of Solidity and how it has evolved to become the leading programming language for blockchain developers.

The Origins of Solidity

Solidity was invented back in 2014 by Dr Christian Reitwiessner, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. His intent with this language was to make it easy to learn and use while still being robust enough to develop complex dApps.

Solidity was developed specifically for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM): the runtime environment that, within Ethereum, does the process of executing smart contracts and allows developers to write and then run them. Through Solidity, a developer could program smart contracts that would run on the EVM and build respective decentralized applications that could then be deployed to the Ethereum network.

The Early Years of Solidity

In the early stages of Solidity’s development, it was used by a small group of enthusiasts who were keen on building dapps on Ethereum. The language was quite immature and there were not very many online materials for developers who wanted to learn it.

However, it still maintained a good deal of power, was easy for any developer who had ever used C++, Python, or JavaScript to learn, and offered quite a lot of flexibility as a tool for building decentralized applications. This resulted, almost immediately, in a rapid uptake of Solidity by developers as a solid, go-to programming language.

The Rise of Solidity

The more successful Ethereum became as a platform and a provider of decentralized applications, the higher the adoption became for Solidity as the preferred language to build those dApps. More and more developers adopted the language, more and more third-party resources became available, and more and more full-time jobs were being advertised that required an understanding of the language.

Finally, in 2016, the 0.4.0 release of Solidity included numerous improvements, including support for the new network protocol on Ethereum (EIP-150).

The Solidity of Today

Solidity is the most widely used programming language for smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain and is today used by thousands of developers worldwide to build a variety of decentralized applications, from cryptocurrency exchanges and voting systems to supply-chain management systems.

Solidity has matured greatly from where it was in 2014. Each version that’s released is a massive improvement over the last. New, major versions with new features and improvements come out regularly. At this point, solidity is a serious programming language with serious staying power.

Introduction about Cardano Smart Contracts

The landscape of blockchain technology is rapidly changing, and Cardano has well positioned to be a major leader in the race for innovation and functionality. One of the key turning points in Cardano’s journey was the Alonzo Hard Fork, when smart contracts came to the Cardano mainnet. After the Alonzo completed its ledger switch, developers were able to start developing and deploy smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain with a powerful and unique programming language, Haskell. In this blog, we will look into the world of smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain, learn about the Haskell programming language and how Cardano fits into the current technological landscape.

Smart Contracts: A Primer

Smart contracts are essentially self-executing or digital contracts where intermediaries are no longer necessary to grant validity to transactions, but instead rely on trust and transparency. Relying substantially on code, these contracts automate processes, executing predefined actions between transacting parties or the transfer of assets when predefined conditions are met.

Cardano’s blockchain is a smart-contract platform or blockchain collocatively designed to run scalable and fault-tolerant distributed applications (DApps). One of the unique characteristics of Cardano’s smart contract (currently referred to as Plutus) is its dual-layer design. It has on-chain validators responsible for executing and verifying smart contracts directly on the chain, and off-chain transaction building components that enable users to construct and interact with smart contracts off-chain. This design enables us to execute and validate smart contracts in a transparent and robust way, while also efficiently constructing and optimising those contracts and their interactions prior to on-chain execution, thus boosting the scalability of the network. Enormous computational complexity comes with decentralised computation, but as optimal data structures and algorithms become available, we expect numerous DApps and decentralised applications to emerge on the Cardano blockchain, utilising its unique dual-layer design. This dual-layer nature of Cardano embodies Cardano’s design philosophy for high and transparent security ensuring robust operations.

Programming Languages for Cardano Smart Contracts

Cardano offers developers three distinct languages for smart contract development:

• Marlowe: a domain-specific language (DSL) for expressing blockchain applications to deal with financial transactions. It provides enhanced guarantees to proved security, also providing finite certainty as well as golden guarantees of termination. Marlowe could be used to construct financial smart contracts and could enforce rules such as: deals closing have a finite lifetime. Deals must have some fixed number of time units during which they are effective. Nothing persists when a deal closes.
• Plutus: Plutus is the primary smart contract platform of Cardano, which executes smart contracts written in Haskell, the preeminent language for formal, fully predictable programming. Plutus allows developers to write smart contracts with immense power. With Plutus, many applications can be developed, such as token issuance, exchange, and trading, without having to go through full-fledged smart contract development exercises. You get an instant app, improved security, and speed in a box.Write your code, test it, and check if it passes the types. If it passes, it is being transformed into Plutus Core. What is the essence of this transformation process? Cardano’s smart contracts are potentially executable on the blockchain. Contracts are often highly complicated in nature. However, the Cardano blockchain can only accept one type of code to be executed – cannot ‘understand’ every single higher-level human language. During the development process, you write your contracts in Plutus, a higher-level human-sounding language. Once it is type-checked, it is then transformed into Plutus Core, a lower-level language the Cardano blockchain can accept and execute. Plutus Core is machine-ready code that the blockchain can easily accept and execute. This transformation acts as a bridge to execute high-level contract logic in a secure and timely manner, without invalidating the security and integrity of the Cardano blockchain. The image below depicts a well-defined, yet simple, description of the transformation from Plutus to Plutus Core.
• Haskell: The core language of Plutus and Marlowe, and a purely functional programming language with a reputation for high-assurance code, Haskell is chosen for strong code correctness in smart contracts on Cardano.

Creating Cardano Smart Contracts

Developing smart contracts on Cardano involves a structured process with eight distinct steps:

1. A Backgrounder: Define the Smart Contract: Begin by outlining the purpose and functionality of your smart contract. Determine what kind of assets or operations it will manage, and identify the conditions or rules it should enforce.
2. Install Development Tools: Ensure your machine is setup with the necessary tools to write and compile plutus applications.
3. Writing Plutus Code:
   • Basic Structure: Create the basic structure of your contract, from importing the necessary modules, to defining the basic data types used in the contract.
   • Logic contract: Write the logic of your smart contract in Plutus. Define functions and data structures that specify the behaviour of your smart contract, the movement of assets, and the permissions and rules that it implements.
4. Type checking: Use the development tools to check your code for type errors. Plutus has a rich type system to help you catch errors early.
5. Testing: You’ll need to write test cases to ensure that your smart contract behaves properly. You can run the contract in various scenarios.
6. Compile to Plutus Core: After you have created your Plutus code and tested it for errors, you must convert it to Plutus Core, which is the language that the Cardano blockchain understands. The conversion from Plutus to Plutus Core is usually accomplished using development tools.
7. Restore on the Cardano Network: Restore your compiled Plutus Core code to the Cardano network. This is typically done through a transaction containing the contract code, along with any starting funds or parameter it might need.
8. Engage with the Contract: users can now interact with your smart contract running on the Cardano blockchain, through transactions, invoking contract functions, and interacting with its blockchain state.

At every step of the way, it is useful to comment your code, make sure you’re following industry best practices for security and performance, and think about how your smart contract might impact the Cardano ecosystem as a whole, in terms of the network’s ability to scale and use its resources. You’ll want to stay up to date with changes and updates in the Cardano ecosystem in order to keep your smart contract humming along.

What Sets Cardano Apart?

Cardano distinguishes itself from other blockchain platforms through several key features:

• Peer-Reviewed Research: Cardano’s research is based in peer-reviewed research so that means the highest levels of engineering and security are asserted in the development of Cardano.
• Significant robustness and correctness: that is important for the first `Advanced Financial Technologies` contract engine on a blockchain: the Haskell Language. Cardano smart contracts are written in Haskell and operators can make the move instantly. This gives Cardano huge security and trust benefits.
• Rich Type System: Haskell’s static types ensure that code is mistake-free at compile-time and thus better-quality and more dependable.

Use Cases of Cardano Blockchain

Cardano’s smart contract capabilities open up a world of possibilities, including:

• NFT Marketplaces: Write an NFT marketplace on Cardano to take a share of the NFT trend.
• Cardano Architecture DeFi. Applications: Typically, DeFi applications for DEXs, Stablecoins, Lending protocols , Synthetics DeFi Development can be developed more effectively and efficiently on the Cardano’s novel architecture.
• DApps in practically every category from DeFi to gaming can run on Cardano. Cardano has many smart contract-supporting projects already supporting people to build useful and user-experience-friendly applications.

The Birth of Aiken: Simplifying Smart Contract Development

designed to simplify and improve smart contract development on Cardano while supporting an easy-to-learn syntax, integrating with others tools and languages, and offering state-of-art functionality, Aiken serves as the high-level language we need to breach the complexity gap between the programming languages of the cutting edge and truly developer-friendly platforms such as Rust and Elm. Aiken is cool. But, it could well be some time before we see the mass adoption of Aiken and also Plutus, the new ‘programming language’ for smart contracts on Cardano. While we wait, what exactly do we mean when we invoke the term ‘new programming languages’ in private blockchains?

Conclusion

Cardano’s Alonzo Hard Fork is driving smart contract development onto its blockchain, and Plutus built on Haskell is leading the charge. Cardano’s high-assurance code and its emphasis on peer-reviewed research makes it a trustworthy bastion for organisations and developers. With Aiken evolving to be part of the Cardano ecosystem, developers have an even stronger reason to choose the Cardano network for their smart-contract projects to safely bring them to life. Cardano ecosystem is developer-friendly and it’s as good as time as any to go onchain! The future of Cardano and smart contract development looks bright. With the continuous evolution of the Cardano ecosystem, it’s likely to attract many developers who seek a robust and reliable smart-contract platform for their projects.

Why Do We Use Rust to Develop Smart Contracts?

Rust, an other system-programming language that promises safety guarantees, is a great example of that. Development in Rust is attracting developers who want to build safe and efficient smart contracts, such as those on blockchain.

Why Rust?

• Memory Safety: Rust’s ownership system ensures that there are no null pointer dereferences, dangling pointers or buffer overflows – all common vulnerabilities in smart contract development.
• Concurrency: Rust’s concurrency guarantees allow for smart contracts to be executed at high speeds, especially across multiple transactions.
• Performance: Being a compiled language, Rust guarantees performance similar to C and C++, which is a must for smart contracts that need to execute as quickly as possible.

The Rust Advantage

• Type System: According to Rust’s website: ‘The type system catches so many errors at compile‑time that there are usually very few opportunities to make a mistake at runtime, when it is often too late. Blockchains tend to be fallible, and too many mistakes will lead to catastrophe.
• Immutable By Default: All variables in Rust are immutable by default. This reflects the belief that (immutable) data once written to the blockchain should never be written over.
• Pattern Matching: Rust’s pattern matching is incredibly powerful. For example, smart contracts that accept requests of various types can benefit greatly from this Rust feature.
• Rich Standard Library: The standard library in Rust offers a large number of facilities, as minimal as possible dependencies and allowing users to include many functionalities without bringing in external dependencies can be a real lifesaver, especially in smart contracts where we’re always looking to reduce dependencies and write more secure code.

Rust’s Ecosystem for Blockchain

Rust is a fast-growing ecosystem with libraries and frameworks designed for blockchain development:

• Wasm: Rust has first-class support for WebAssembly (Wasm), a binary instruction set that web browsers can execute. Most new blockchains use Wasm for smart contract execution, making Rust a good fit.
• Software libraries: Rust’s package manager, Cargo, and its package registry, Crates.io, offer a smorgasbord of useful libraries that do everything from lifting cryptography to lifting data structures out of CSVs and into memory.
• Free Community Support: Rust has a very helpful community of people active in discord, forums and other resources who are happy to help you if you are trying to create software using Rust for your first blockchain project.

Rust in Blockchain A number of blockchain platforms have also begun to support, or even recommend, Rust for smart contract development:

• Parity’s Substrate: a framework for developers to create their own blockchains, also has native Rust support.
• NEAR Protocol: Offers a Rust SDK for building smart contracts.
• Solana: Encourages the use of Rust for developing on its platform.

Challenges and Considerations

What I’ve said so far about Rust, though, is incredibly positive stuff. What makes Rust hard to learn? The ownership and borrowing system is designed to provide memory safety, making it one of the things Rust is particularly known for – but it’s not an easy concept to wrap your head around for someone new to the language. Where Nova is concerned, though, whatever time is spent to learn these things should be more than worth it in order to have smart contracts that are both secure and fast. Furthermore, whereas Rust provides many safety guarantees to the programmer, smart contract programmers must still worry about logic errors, reentrancy attacks and other vulnerabilities inherent to the blockchain.

Conclusion

As the blockchain industry booms, so do the tools and languages available for software development. Rust’s novel features and rapidly growing ecosystem make it a candidate to dominate the next generation of smart contracts. With its memory safety and speed, Rust is a powerful tool for either the veteran blockchain developer or blockchain newbie looking to build the decentralised future.