Soroban, the High-Performance Smart Contract Platform Built for Developers

Smart contracts have the power to transform the way we interact with the world around us by reducing middlemen and decentralizing trust. To achieve this potential, there needs to be a smart contract platform that is fast, secure, and user-friendly. Unfortunately, many existing platforms fall short in one or more of these areas.

Soroban aims to address this by providing a platform that not only tackles current challenges but also lays the groundwork for the future of decentralized applications.

Key Features of Soroban

Soroban development has focused on several key features:

• A batteries-included developer experience with access to built-in contracts and a local sandbox for easy setup and iterative development.
• A scalable design that can handle the current traffic on the Stellar network and grow with it, with transaction footprints that allow for concurrency.
• A tunable gas model that provides a strong correlation between compute resources and fees.
• Designing a state archiving mechanism to address ledger bloat.
• Access to financial rails via the existing Stellar tech stack and ecosystem, including access to top-tier exchanges, on and off-ramps, and custody providers.

Since Soroban was first introduced last year, we’ve been hard at work helping prepare it for mainnet launch, bootstrapping the ecosystem, and providing funding opportunities for developers. In that time, there’s been incredible engagement and excitement from the community, as well as a growing number of pioneers building on Soroban.

Many applications and tools have already been launched on Soroban’s testnet, dubbed Futurenet, that showcase the platform’s potential. There are tools that simplify building and testing Soroban contracts, prototypes of financial applications, and non-financial application. You can explore some of them here.

For developers looking to get started with Soroban, there are plenty of resources available to help you hit the ground running. The developer documentation provides detailed information on how to use Soroban, including tutorials and guides.

Looking for an interactive way to learn Soroban? Head over to Soroban Quest or Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, which are gamified learning experiences that will teach you everything about Soroban and Rust-based smart contract development.

Once you feel comfortable with Soroban, try exploring various funding opportunities. Two options are the Stellar Community Fund (SCF) and the SCF Bootcamp. The SCF is a fast-paced, open-application awards program that accepts submissions on a monthly basis. The SCF Bootcamp, on the other hand, is a virtual and global 5-day long event that connects startups interested in building on Stellar and/or Soroban or those already doing so.

Lastly, come hang out in the Developer Discord to ask questions, meet other developers, and take part in virtual events.