All You Need to Know About the Solidity Programming Language

Solidity in crypto is a term that often confuses beginners, primarily because blockchains and crypto projects are often debated in terms of how stable they are as investments.

However, Solidity has nothing to do with adjectives related to physical properties, the state of flux, or even how steady an investment a particular coin may be. Rather, Solidity is a programming language for blockchains, and learning about it requires delving into the moving parts of modern programmable blockchains.

Let’s have a look at what Solidity is in crypto and exactly how much of a formative role it’s played in crypto history!

What is Solidity?

Without mincing words, it could simply be stated that Solidity is the programming language of the Ethereum blockchain. Doing so, however, would sell Solidity short.

Influenced by JavaScript, Python, and C++, Solidity began as an object-oriented programming language and is used to create smart contracts on blockchains such as Ethereum.

Solidity was originally proposed by then-CTO of Ethereum and Polkadot founder Dr. Gavin Wood before being further developed by a team led by Christian Retweissner. It is sponsored by the Ethereum Foundation, and since its 0.1.0 version was designed to lower the entry barrier to Ethereum.

While it’s meant to be simple, there are some extremely complex things that you need to understand to get a full picture of Solidity’s role in Ethereum and crypto as a whole.

Ethereum and Solidity

Prior to Ethereum’s advent, most cryptocurrency and blockchain projects attempted to emulate Bitcoin. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, however, saw much more potential in blockchain technology.

Buterin proposed the idea of Ethereum, formulating a system of smart contracts interacting with each other. He envisioned the possibility of complex transactions that didn’t require an intermediary to validate them.

Rather than focusing on money and simply transacting value between users, Ethereum introduced a whole world of possibilities, allowing various types of smart contracts that emulated human problem-solving.

This, however, meant that Turing completeness became a consideration.

What is Turing Completeness?

In 1936, renowned scientist Alan Turing authored a paper titled “On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” In this paper, he detailed a machine that could solve any sort of problem that a human is capable of.

As a derivative of this legendary work, we now regard a system as Turing complete if it can simulate a Turing machine. Originally, this Turing machine was designed to be an infinite tape broken into squares that could be used for reading and writing data.

This data would be in binary code, composed of 1s and 0s, and the machine would then interpret that data into a finite set of symbols comprising its alphabet. The machine also has a read-write head that can move along the tape, allowing the machine to focus on one square at a time.

Thanks to this architecture, the machine computes what operations to run based on something called a “finite state machine.” In the aforementioned paper, Turing detailed m-configurations referring to a number of finite states within a finite state machine that the machine can switch between.

A Turing machine starts in a given state and moves to other states as required. To do so, it scans the symbol present on the current square and checks a “transition table” for instructions on what to do next.

Once it’s finished with all operations required by an input string, the machine achieves what’s called an “accept” state or final state. This state causes the machine to stop execution. Without this state, a machine would run in continuous loops.

The reason these states are important to know about when discussing Solidity is that Ethereum uses network states as well.The Ethereum yellow paper, authored by Dr. Gavin Wood, delves into them in detail.

The Ethereum Virtual Machine

Often known simply as “EVM,” the Ethereum Virtual Machine is a Turing complete system. It’s a virtual stack that resides within every Ethereum node that executes contract bytecode.

This is paramount for Ethereum, as the EVM helps the network as a whole achieve consensus. It’s also a big part of how Ethereum’s economic incentivization system is designed since “gas fees” are nothing but a means for users to pre-pay for the instructions they want to execute on the EVM.

All of these contracts that are executed on the Ethereum Virtual Machine are written using the Solidity language. Instead of the binary code that the machine itself uses, Solidity makes things human-readable since it uses letters and numbers.

History of Solidity

As previously mentioned, Solidity came into being with a version number of 0.1.0 and was first proposed by Dr. Gavin Wood, himself a huge part of Ethereum’s founding and, therefore, crypto folklore.

It started off as an extremely simple language and had a syntax considered similar to JavaScript.This simplicity slowly gave way to a focus on security, and the more recent versions of Solidity are less straightforward than many other languages, thanks to the security-focused development of the protocol.

Working with Solidity

Solidity’s entire purpose is to work with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, and while it shares certain things with JavaScript, it also has elements specific to Ethereum, such as built-in commands. These allow Solidity to access a certain part of the blockchain and help developers program smart contracts specifically with respect to the EVM.

It supports libraries, inheritance, and various other complex user-defined features. However, it can be considered a contract-oriented language rather than a truly object-oriented one. It’s typed statically and compiles all instructions into bytecode that the Ethereum network can read and interpret.

Solidity adopts human-level logic and executes smart contracts on a Turing complete system. The fact that Ethereum presents a Turing complete virtual machine embedded in its node implementation is often touted as a revolutionary feat.

The smart contracts programmed using Solidity allow you, or any other Ethereum network participant, to transact with others that aren’t known or trusted. Solidity smart contracts set the rules of a transaction in a machine-readable language, adapting machine logic to human needs.

Learning Solidity

While there are plenty of smart contract programming languages out there, Ethereum has been the dominant platform for a while and isn’t likely to go anywhere. As such, Web3 or blockchain developers can’t go wrong with learning Solidity if they want to get into Ethereum development.

There are several resources out there for learning Solidity, but your best bet is to start with the official custodian, the Ethereum Foundation.

Future of Solidity

Solidity is constantly evolving, and while it may have left the cornerstones of its original existence behind, it remains a powerful tool and the basis for Ethereum’s continued success.

It’s unlikely that it’ll stop being anything other than a foundational part of Ethereum and Web3, so investing in learning how to use Solidity is likely to remain a good career move for aspiring blockchain devs.

Key Takeaways

Solidity is a smart contract programming language used by the Ethereum blockchain. It underpins the Ethereum Virtual Machine, making Ethereum a decentralized, Turing complete virtual machine.

Smart contracts written in Solidity have changed the face of cryptocurrency forever since their introduction, a product of Vitalik Buterin’s vision and the expertise of Dr. Gavin Wood.

It began as an extremely simple interface but has developed into a more and more security-focused means of working with the leading programmable blockchain in the industry, Ethereum.