This edition is brought to you by TxPipe, an open-source software development company on Cardano that focuses on tooling and infrastructure solutions to improve developer experience and accelerate blockchain adoption.
In today’s article, we will be diving deep into a series of software designs commonly used for project development on the blockchain. We will look at two particular projects that place a particular emphasis on diversifying the programming languages used to code on Cardano, attracting a wider array of developers looking to build on the ecosystem. Let’s dive in:
TxPipe’s Pallas and Dolos projects improve developer experience through open-source tooling and dApp-friendly infrastructure solutions on Cardano
At the moment, the number of developers working on Cardano is limited, which in turn leads to fewer projects being developed. This limits the creation of innovative solutions and products for users and companies, ultimately hindering broader adoption of the blockchain.
Cardano's security and reliability are rooted in its use of Haskell. This functional programming language forms the foundation for Plutus, Cardano's smart contract language. Because Haskell offers such a high degree of certainty, its rigorous approach ensures that the code written on Cardano is secure and accurate.
Despite the high level of security Haskell provides, the number of developers who are skilled in Haskell is limited. Similarly, the Haskell node is primarily designed for stake pool operation, making the interface less dApp developer friendly, and opening up a window of opportunity for optimizations in other use cases, such as the node as a data source.
Recently, Cardano has been seeing a small but steady inflow of new initiatives from developers who have incorporated easier and more accessible programming languages, as well as new tools and solutions that facilitate dApp development.
An Alternative to Existing Code
Using Rust as a base programming language has been among the new initiatives used on Cardano to attract new developers to the blockchain. TxPipe was one of the first companies to take advantage of this opportunity in developing Pallas.
Contrary to Haskell, Rust is a less-used programming language on Cardano that has, in certain aspects, proved to be more user-friendly for new developers. Having this in mind, developers at TxPipe created Pallas, a growing library of modules that reimplements common Ouroboros/Cardano logic in native rust. This library serves as a software development kit (SDK) of platform-specific building tools for developers that use Rust on Cardano.
Alongside Pallas, TxPipe also developed Dolos, a project funded in Project Catalyst’s Fund 11 to create a Rust data node; a very limited and focused version of the Cardano node that can be used as a cost-effective, performant option to deploy data nodes.
Learning from the experiences of software developers from other blockchain ecosystems, TxPipe pinpointed a common issue on Cardano: due to a set of design choices, the existing Cardano node became very complicated to connect, making development and dApp interaction with the blockchain difficult.
Through Dolos, the team designed a node that remedied this issue, specifically designing it to make it efficient as a dApp backend; the foundation that powers the user interface and provides the core functionality of the dApp. This move in turn provides alternatives to existing integration mechanisms and strengthens overall adoption for new developers on Cardano.
Both Pallas and Dolos are a step toward a full node using Rust, meaning that the node maintains a complete copy of the blockchain and validates transactions independently. The efficiency and robustness of Rust-based full nodes contribute significantly to a blockchain network’s overall performance and sustainability because these nodes can go from being ones that exclusively perform the role of a data source to ones that can perform validations and eventually produce blocks. Along the same lines, node diversity would contribute to overall network performance and resilience.
TxPipe, an open-source software company founded in 2021, believes that blockchain adoption can be accelerated by improving developer experience. Committed to its mission to facilitate software development for projects in the Cardano ecosystem by simplifying design and implementation, TxPipe has designed several open-source tools that mitigate existing issues for developers seeking to launch dApps on the network.
For more information on Pallas and Dolos, follow the link below:
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