Solidity

Solidity is a high-level programming language for writing smart contracts on Ethereum and other blockchain platforms. It is designed to enable the creation of self-executing contracts that run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and can manage accounts, store data, and interact with other contracts. Solidity is contract-oriented and statically typed, with syntax influenced by C++, Python, and JavaScript.

Developed by the Ethereum community, including early contributors, Solidity was introduced in the mid-2010s and has since become the de facto language for Ethereum smart contracts. The language is maintained by the Solidity team at the Ethereum Foundation together with ongoing community contributions. Source code is compiled with the Solidity compiler (solc) to produce EVM bytecode or to run in development environments such as Remix.

Solidity features include contracts, inheritance, libraries, interfaces, and abstract contracts. It provides static typing, arrays, mappings, enums, structs, and a rich function model with visibility specifiers (public, private, internal, external), modifiers, and events. It supports payable functions, constructors, fallback and receive functions, and complex data structures. Concepts such as storage vs. memory management and ABI encoding are central to writing efficient and secure contracts.

Solidity code is widely used to implement decentralized applications and token standards (for example ERC-20 and ERC-721). Development tools include Remix, Hardhat, Truffle, and Brownie. Security considerations include risks like reentrancy, integer overflow/underflow (addressed in newer compiler versions), gas costs, and upgradeability patterns. The ecosystem emphasizes audits, testing, and, where appropriate, formal verification.