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The concept behind the Vyper Mission was to develop one thing that was designed on the language stage to naturally exhibit a excessive diploma of security. The challenge was initially authored by Vitalik as a proof-of-concept alternative for Serpent, its predecessor, however shortly after its creation Vyper discovered itself with out a devoted maintainer. Fortunately, there have been enthusiastic neighborhood members that took up the torch and continued improvement of the challenge, and we (the EF Python Workforce) grew to become re-involved within the challenge for a while earlier this 12 months.
This fall, a preliminary safety audit was carried out by the Consensys Diligence group on the Python-based Vyper compiler. You may learn the outcomes for your self right here.
We encourage you to learn the report, nonetheless, there are two important take-aways.
- There are a number of severe bugs within the Vyper compiler.
- The codebase has a excessive stage of technical debt which is able to make addressing these points complicated.
For the reason that present Python-based Vyper implementation will not be but manufacturing prepared, it has been moved out of the ethereum github group into its personal group: vyperlang. The prevailing maintainers are planning to deal with the problems independently as soon as once more, however we’ll proceed to observe the challenge intently right here: > https://github.com/vyperlang/vyper
In the meantime, our group continues work on a Rust-based compiler in tandem. Extra on that beneath, however first, right here’s a bit extra on how we received to the place we’re in the present day.
Over the course of this 12 months we labored with the challenge maintainers to concentrate on enhancing the code high quality and structure of the challenge. After a couple of months of labor we had been skeptical that the python codebase was prone to ship on the concept Vyper promised. The codebase contained a big quantity of technical and architectural debt, and from our perspective it did not appear to be the prevailing maintainers had been centered on fixing this.
Exploring Rust
Earlier this 12 months in August, we explored producing a model of the Vyper compiler constructed on essentially completely different structure. The objective was to write down a compiler in Rust that leverages the prevailing work by the Solidity group and makes use of the YUL intermediate illustration to permit us to focus on EVM or EWASM throughout compilation. A Rust primarily based compiler may be simply compiled to WASM, making the compiler far more moveable than one primarily based in Python. By constructing on prime of YUL we might get the EVM and EWASM compilation free of charge, solely requiring the compiler to deal with the transformation from a Vyper AST to YUL.
We had been sufficiently far together with our Rust primarily based Vyper compiler when the Python Vyper audit was launched, and had been assured within the directionl. The audit confirmed many considerations across the python codebase and helped to validate the route we have taken.
The work continues
That mentioned, the maintainers of the Python Vyper codebase do intend to proceed with the challenge. Whereas we don’t plan to have continued involvement within the python codebase, we want them luck but in addition needed to make notice of latest occasions to keep away from inadvertently signalling that the challenge was protected to make use of.
So at current there are at the moment two “Vyper” compilers: The EF-supported work in direction of constructing a compiler written in Rust to ship on the unique thought of Vyper, and the Python effort which is able to work independently towards the identical targets within the Python codebase. We’re hopeful that we are able to proceed working collectively in direction of a single “Vyper” with a number of implementations, and we’ll preserve everybody updated because the challenge strikes ahead.
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