The thought behind the Vyper Challenge was to develop one thing that was designed on the language degree to naturally exhibit a excessive diploma of security. The venture was initially authored by Vitalik as a proof-of-concept alternative for Serpent, its predecessor, however shortly after its creation Vyper discovered itself and not using a devoted maintainer. Fortunately, there have been enthusiastic group members that took up the torch and continued improvement of the venture, and we (the EF Python Crew) grew to become re-involved within the venture for a while earlier this yr.
This fall, a preliminary safety audit was carried out by the Consensys Diligence workforce on the Python-based Vyper compiler. You can read the results for yourself here.
We encourage you to learn the report, nonetheless, there are two predominant take-aways.
- There are a number of critical bugs within the Vyper compiler.
- The codebase has a excessive degree of technical debt which is able to make addressing these points complicated.
For the reason that current Python-based Vyper implementation shouldn’t be but manufacturing prepared, it has been moved out of the ethereum github group into its personal group: vyperlang. The present maintainers are planning to handle the problems independently as soon as once more, however we’ll proceed to observe the venture carefully right here: > https://github.com/vyperlang/vyper
In the meantime, our workforce 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 right this moment.
Over the course of this yr we labored with the venture maintainers to give attention to enhancing the code high quality and structure of the venture. After just a few months of labor we had been skeptical that the python codebase was more likely 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 look like the prevailing maintainers had been targeted on fixing this.
Exploring Rust
Earlier this yr in August, we explored producing a model of the Vyper compiler constructed on basically completely different structure. The objective was to jot down a compiler in Rust that leverages the prevailing work by the Solidity workforce and makes use of the YUL intermediate illustration to permit us to focus on EVM or EWASM throughout compilation. A Rust based mostly compiler could be simply compiled to WASM, making the compiler way more moveable than one based mostly in Python. By constructing on high of YUL we’d get the EVM and EWASM compilation without spending a dime, solely requiring the compiler to deal with the transformation from a Vyper AST to YUL.
We had been sufficiently far together with our Rust based mostly Vyper compiler when the Python Vyper audit was launched, and had been assured within the directionl. The audit confirmed many issues across the python codebase and helped to validate the path we have taken.
The work continues
That mentioned, the maintainers of the Python Vyper codebase do intend to proceed with the venture. Whereas we don’t plan to have continued involvement within the python codebase, we want them luck but additionally needed to make notice of current occasions to keep away from inadvertently signalling that the venture was secure to make use of.
So at current there are presently 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 objectives within the Python codebase. We’re hopeful that we will proceed working collectively in direction of a single “Vyper” with a number of implementations, and we’ll hold everybody updated because the venture strikes ahead.