Cardano [ADA] and Emurgo clarify technical doubts for the community

On 23rd August, Emurgo, the venture partner of Cardano posted a Medium blog titled ‘Eight questions developers might be asking about Cardano’s smart contracts. The post was comprised with knowledge of the gas model, supported languages, compilation, formal verification process, among other topics. The same was tweeted by the official Twitter handle of the Cardano Foundation that read:

“Read the latest blog post from Emurgo… It answers questions you may have if you are planning on working with Cardano smart contracts!”

The document, prepared by Emurgo’s Technical Manager Sebastien Guillemot explained the definition of a uniformed gas model. According to the techie, any language built that can be compiled down to IELE uses IELE Intermediate Representative, hence, shares the same gas model. Moreover, the cost of gas is defined by IELE IR. Regarding the cryptocurrencies used for gas price, the blog read:

“The testnet runs on ETC because it is easier to setup that way. In the future it will run on the mainnet and use ADA.”

The blog assumed a situation where a compiler is written to compile a language for LLVM intermediate representation and an analysis and optimization layer is written for different architectures. In such cases, no changes are required to be made in the analysis and optimization layer on writing a compiler for a new language to do the same.

The process of formal verification of smart contracts was also explained by Emurgo’s member. Ethereum is relatively safer and its KEVM provides a decent amount of clarification in Ethereum’s yellow paper. Subsequently, the blog conveyed that IELE removes some of the dangerous elements present in the EVM as well, such as calling library contracts, integer overflow, among others.

Furthermore, the expert mentioned that the verification of smart contracts generally demands extra work. The process of verification can be tedious, therefore, the blog suggested the developers follow the given standards that are verified.

It also shared that the language to be used for writing smart contracts, Plutus and Plutus Core are not yet completed. Regarding this, Guillemot wrote:

“Solidity compiles straight to IELE. It is not the same Solidity as in the EVM though as in IELE some opcodes are not the same (changed or removed) and therefore Solidity had to be modified also.”