The 4th industrial revolution brought to fall a paradigm shift from centralization to decentralization of digital resources and applications.

Smart contracts are said to be the prerequisite for the development of decentralized applications

What are Smart Contracts?
Introduced by Ethereum, smart contracts are generally associated with cryptocurrencies and are commonly considered a fundamental building block for decentralized finance (DeFi): DApps, and NFT applications.

A smart contract is a self-executing program that automates the actions required in an agreement or contract. Once concluded, the transactions are trackable and irrevocable.

There is a myriad of smart contract use cases today, from games to financial applications. A smart contract ensures fair access to financial primitives, trust-minimized guarantees, and strong and sovereign ownership over digital assets.

Top Smart Contracts Of 2023

SOLIDITY
Solidity is the most popular blockchain programming language of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), also widely used across a span of EVM-compatible blockchains.

Merits
1. Solidity is more like the fantastic starting point for developers switching to Web3 and DeFi technologies. Solidity is high level and its syntax is similar to Javascript.
2. Solidity programming is faster and allows developers to write code much more quickly.
3. Solidity has built-in safety features that can help avoid costly errors. Moreover, Solidity developers have more access to libraries and tooling, better documentation, and more developer assistance.

Demerits
1. Solidity’s syntax can be confusing at times, especially for a developer with less experience.
2. Function overloading capabilities often have a negative impact on code readability.
3. Solidity development has some quirks that developers may not be familiar with.
4. Coding in Solidity often has higher gas costs compared to lower-level languages. 

VYPER
For blockchains that support EVM, Vyper is the second most popular Web3 programming language after Solidity. It is a pythonic programming language that is contract-oriented and has strong typing, compact compiler code, and effective bytecode generation.

Merit
1. Vyper is a straightforward language aiding in code readability and profitability.
2. It is simpler for developers to use Vyper to create safe smart contracts for use in real-world applications.
3. Vyper is the second most popular smart contract programming language, shares many of Solidity’s tools and resources

Demerits
1. Some of the Solidity-native tools are not yet available on Vyper
2. Vyper still doesn’t have the same level of community support that Solidity has.
3. Vyper programming language Vyper lacks modifiers, class inheritance, and recursive calls.
4. Vyper has fewer features because it is a more recent language still in development.

Solidity and Vyper are the foundation of smart contract development today, however, there are emerging variety of blockchain coding languages as follows:

Yul
Yul is an Ethereum intermediate language that works with the EVM.
For more experienced Web3 developers, Yul excels at optimizing smart contracts and cutting gas costs because it was designed to translate directly to bytecode. Although Yul is an excellent learning tool, it works best for writing precise, effective code. Currently, Yul is an independent programming language without tooling or ecosystem support.

Cairo
Cairo is a Turing-complete programming language for smart contracts designed to produce STARK-provable general-purpose applications.

The main characteristic of Cairo, a layer-2 blockchain built on top of Ethereum, is that program logic is converted into STARK proofs, providing verifiable computation that is settled on the Ethereum blockchain. Cairo is primarily used in StarkNet. Cairo is mostly used for creating rapid and scalable smart contracts, despite its strength.

Rust
For many non-EVM-compatible blockchains, including Polkadot and Solana, Rust is a popular smart contract programming language. Unlike many of the other languages listed here, Rust is not just for Web3 development.

As a programming language, Rust is effective, safe, and minimizes extraneous bloat. Rust data structures are also relatively small, making them a good fit for blockchain space restrictions. Despite this, not all blockchains currently offer comprehensive tooling or strong Rust support.

Move
For Meta’s Diem blockchain, Move Move is a Rust-based smart contract programming language.

The revolutionary approach introduced by Move is based on three fundamental tenets: first-rate resources, enhanced safety, and enhanced verifiability. Most importantly, for blockchain-independent integrations, Move’s programming language integrates resources at the type level rather than supporting any specific coin type (such as ether or bitcoin). The move is now mostly supported within the Aptos and Sui blockchains and is not widely utilized outside of those.

In conclusion, If you are a developer trying to dive into Web3 and DeFi development but aren’t sure which blockchain you want to build on or which language you want to learn. Solidity and Vyper are the finest languages for learning how smart contracts function and what kinds of developer tooling to look out for in a developer.