Cardano to open up to Ethereum Solidity devs with new initiative

Solidity, a major programming language for writing smart contracts, will soon become compatible with the Cardano blockchain.

According to a Thursday announcement on the Cardano developers' website, Cardano devs are now opening up Cardano to the Solidity and Ethereum community through an interoperable platform that uses native Ethereum code.

As part of the effort, Cardano developers are planning to restart and accelerate their K Ethereum Virtual Machine, or KEVM, developer network program. The devnet envisions an EVM running within the so-called “K framework” — a system for specifying and creating languages and virtual machines.

K intends to enable developers to define or implement formal semantics of a programming language in an intuitive, modular manner. “K also generates an executable, 'correct by construction VM' from its formal specification, which is fast and powerful enough to run real programs and smart contracts,” the announcement notes. The system is designed to help create code that is secure and reliable from the start.

Once implemented, the K framework aims to bridge Cardano's blockchain with Solidity, enabling developers to work across both ecosystems.

According to a Wednesday blog post from Charles Hoskinson-founded tech startup IOHK, the KEVM devnet is designed to enable full compatibility with Ethereum. “Because Solidity is a high-level language similar to JavaScript and C++, it cannot be directly executed by the EVM. Solidity programs must be compiled to assembly language (EVM bytecode) first, so they can run on the KEVM,” IOHK’s marketing director, Tim Harrison, wrote.

Alongside KEVM, Cardano developers also plan to deploy other devnets such as Glow and IELE. Developed by MuKn, a partner within the Cardano ecosystem, Glow will be the next devnet to be deployed, according to Harrison. “Most of the core development work is now done, ready for final QA and deployment in January 2021,” he said.

The IELE virtual machine was developed by Cardano community partner Runtime Verification and intends to provide a more secure system than the EVM.

The Cardano ecosystem has been actively integrating its smart contract technology in order to bring new major functionalities. On Thursday IOHK partnered with Wolfram Blockchain Labs to integrate data from the Cardano blockchain into Wolfram Alpha, an answer-engine providing technology for major services such as Apple’s Siri assistant.