Paradigm’s CTO Advocates Moving Away from Solidity for Ethereum

Solidity is currently in a “problematic state,” raising questions about its improvement or the shift to an alternative. This was stated by CTO of Paradigm, Georgios Konstantopoulos.

How should we program Ethereum?

Solidity is in a problematic state right now, IMO. Do we make Solidity good? Do we drop Solidity? If we drop Solidity, do we do Vyper or do we do a new lang?

If we’re doing a new language, should we instead do a RISCV runtime that works w Rust?

— Georgios Konstantopoulos (@gakonst) April 3, 2025

“How should we program Ethereum? […] Do we make Solidity good? Do we drop it? […] Switch to Vyper or a new language? If the latter, should we instead create a RISCV runtime that works with Rust?” — noted the expert.

Solidity is the primary programming language for creating smart contracts on Ethereum.

In response, some community members stated that a simpler, new language would allow developers to avoid costly mistakes, which is critically important for the DeFi ecosystem with a TVL in the tens of billions of dollars.

New language that is *simpler* than solidity, with good interop with/escape hatch to solidity, perhaps by transpiring to it in the first place. By simpler, I mean: give the developer less control, but make it harder for them to make costly mistakes. Example: storage vars are read…

— Ben DiFrancesco (@BenDiFrancesco) April 3, 2025

The founder of DeFi Llama, known as 0xngmi, suggested developing a new analogue that would create conditions for rethinking the process of writing smart contracts, focusing on states and transitions rather than just instructions. This would help prevent errors and make the code more secure.

my unconventional opinion is that it’d be good to create a new languages that instead of being imperative, it worked by having the dev describe a state machine and then it generated code to match that

fundamentally lots of smart contracts implement a state machine, and what…

— 0xngmi (@0xngmi) April 3, 2025

“If the cost of maintaining the current status quo is more expensive than the costs of switching to a new language, we should conduct an industry-wide campaign to abandon Solidity. We could start with the two next most popular options — Rust and Move,” — recommended former head of ecosystem at Aptos Labs, Neil Harunian.

During the discussion, many proposed migrating to Rust, used in the Solana ecosystem. Meanwhile, some doubted its applicability for Ethereum.

A significant portion of commentators advised “fixing” Solidity rather than excluding it entirely. They recommended adding more robust tools and improving the developer experience, emphasizing the need to address “more important tasks”.

if the present value of the continued problematic state is more expensive than the switching costs to a new language, we should hold an industry wide campaign to find a language that makes sense. starting with the two next most adopted SC languages — Rust and Move

— neil (@neilhar_) April 3, 2025

Others suggested utilizing Vyper, associated with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, and actively supported by Curve Finance.

“The creation of the Solidity compiler is in a bad state (I suspect it’s bogged down in technical debt), another compiler or language is needed to work with Ethereum. What’s more intriguing — Paradigm has done a lot to popularize Solidity by creating Solidity-specific tools,” — commented Curve founder Mikhail Egorov.

The entrepreneur urged developers to consider using Vyper, noting the comparatively better state of its compiler.

Just check if Vyper is close enough. You’ll save a whole bunch of work!

— Curve Finance (@CurveFinance) April 3, 2025

“Just check if Vyper is close enough. You’ll save a whole bunch of work!” — reacted the official Curve Finance account.

Back in November 2024, ForkLog reported on the Vlayer team’s plans to expand Ethereum’s functionality by creating Solidity 2.0.

Earlier, Buterin proposed ways to increase decentralization and simplify code auditing.