The concept behind the Vyper Challenge was to develop one thing that was designed on the language stage 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 Workforce) turned re-involved within the venture 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 can read the results for yourself here.
We encourage you to learn the report, nevertheless, there are two important take-aways.
- There are a number of critical bugs within the Vyper compiler.
- The codebase has a excessive stage of technical debt which is able to make addressing these points complicated.
Because the present Python-based Vyper implementation is just not but manufacturing prepared, it has been moved out of the ethereum github group into its personal group: vyperlang. The present maintainers are planning to deal with the problems independently as soon as once more, however we are going to proceed to comply with the venture carefully right here: > https://github.com/vyperlang/vyper
In the meantime, our group continues work on a Rust-based compiler in tandem. Extra on that under, however first, right here’s a bit extra on how we bought to the place we’re immediately.
Over the course of this 12 months we labored with the venture maintainers to deal with bettering the code high quality and structure of the venture. After a couple of months of labor we have been skeptical that the python codebase was more likely to ship on the concept Vyper promised. The codebase contained a major quantity of technical and architectural debt, and from our perspective it did not appear to be the prevailing maintainers have 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 totally 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 will be simply compiled to WASM, making the compiler rather more moveable than one primarily based in Python. By constructing on prime of YUL we might get the EVM and EWASM compilation totally free, solely requiring the compiler to deal with the transformation from a Vyper AST to YUL.
We have been sufficiently far together with our Rust primarily based Vyper compiler when the Python Vyper audit was launched, and have been assured within the directionl. The audit confirmed many considerations across the python codebase and helped to validate the path we have taken.
The work continues
That stated, 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 observe of latest occasions to keep away from inadvertently signalling that the venture 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 objectives 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 maintain everybody updated because the venture strikes ahead.
