Smart Contracts
Which platform makes it hardest to write a dangerous smart contract?
DX is the northstar for crypto adoption. Writing safe smart contracts is beyond most developers — too costly, too time-consuming, too dangerous. The chain that engineers risk out at the platform level wins.
Quick Comparison
| Dimension | EVM (Solidity) | SVM (Rust/Anchor) | Move (Sui) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Safety | Opt-in (libraries, audits) | Partial (runtime guards) | Structural (compiler-enforced) |
| Onboarding | Days (JS-like, Remix) | Months (Rust learning curve) | Weeks (novel but purpose-built) |
| Speed | 12s blocks, Foundry v1.0 | 400ms blocks, slow deploys | 390ms finality, fast local tests |
| Composability | Flexible but dangerous | CPI (depth limit 4) | PTBs (1,024 ops) + full stack |
| Ecosystem | 31K devs, deepest tooling | 17K devs, fastest growing | 1.4K devs, completing full stack |
Safety
The pit of success question: does the platform prevent vulnerabilities, or does the developer prevent them?
| Vulnerability | EVM (Solidity) | SVM (Rust/Anchor) | Move (Sui) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Re-entrancy | Manual prevention (OpenZeppelin guard) | Runtime restricts CPI depth to 4 | Impossible by design (no recursive calls) |
| Asset duplication | Manual balance management | Runtime prevents same-slot double-write | Linear types: move only, never copy |
| Integer overflow | Checked since Solidity 0.8 | Panics in debug, wraps in release | Always checked at bytecode verifier level |
| Access control | Modifier-based (convention) | Account ownership + manual signer checks | Capability-based (compiler-enforced) |
| Formal verification | Certora, Halmos, Echidna, Slither | Trident (early) | Move Prover + Sui Prover (open-sourced 2025) |
Re-entrancy alone caused $325M in stolen assets in 2025. Move eliminates the class entirely. 5 of the OWASP Smart Contract Top 10 are structurally impossible in Move.
Onboarding
How fast from zero to deployed contract?
| Dimension | EVM (Solidity) | SVM (Rust/Anchor) | Move (Sui) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language curve | Days (JS-like syntax) | Months (ownership, borrowing) | Weeks (novel but purpose-built) |
| Concepts before deploy | ~5-6 | ~8-10 | ~6-7 |
| Zero-install path | Remix (browser IDE) | Solana Playground | CLI required |
| IDE support | Mature (Hardhat LSP, Foundry) | Excellent (rust-analyzer) | Growing (Move LSP, trace debugger) |
| Documentation | Massive corpus | Strong, improving | Smallest, growing fast |
| Test framework | Foundry v1.0, Hardhat | LiteSVM + Anchor | sui move test (built-in) |
| Tests in contract language | Yes (Foundry) | No (TypeScript/Rust separate) | Yes (Move #[test]) |
Iteration Speed
| Metric | EVM | SVM | Move (Sui) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Testnet block time | ~12 seconds (Sepolia) | ~400ms (Devnet) | Sub-second (Testnet) |
| Mainnet finality | ~15 minutes | ~13 seconds economic | ~390ms (Mysticeti) |
| Local test speed | Foundry: 2-5x faster than Hardhat | LiteSVM: in-process SVM | Fast compilation, no validator needed |
| Fuzzing | Foundry built-in + Echidna (production) | Trident (early) | Move Prover + Belobog |
Sub-second finality changes what you can build. Real-time agent workflows, on-chain IoT, HFT-style DeFi — these require ~400ms or less.
Composability
Can agents compose transactions without middleware?
| Primitive | EVM | SVM | Move (Sui) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transaction batching | Multicall + EIP-7702 (2025) | Instructions in one tx, CPI depth 4 | PTBs: 1,024 ops with data flow between |
| Native identity | None (ERC-4337 account abstraction) | None (SPL Name Service) | zkLogin (protocol-level, 7.6M txs) |
| Off-chain storage | IPFS, Arweave (fragmented) | Shadow Drive, Arweave | Walrus (same-stack, $140M raised) |
| Programmable access | — | — | Seal (identity-based encryption) |
| Verifiable compute | — | — | Nautilus (TEE attestations on-chain) |
Sui's extended stack (Walrus + Seal + Nautilus) means identity, storage, encryption, and verifiable compute ship as one platform — not glue code across five vendors.
Ecosystem
| Metric | EVM | SVM | Move (Sui) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly active devs | ~31,900 | ~17,700 | ~1,400 |
| New devs (2024-25) | 16,181 added | 11,534 added (+83% YoY) | 219% growth (H1 2024) |
| Audit cost | Baseline | +25-40% premium | +30-45% premium |
| Production DeFi | Uniswap, Aave, Compound | Raydium, Jupiter, Orca | DeepBook, Cetus, Navi |
| Token standards | ERC-20/721/1155 (mature) | SPL Token, Token-2022 | Sui Coin/NFT (standardizing) |
Smallest ecosystem, fastest percentage growth, highest developer commitment (>50% single-chain). The thesis: DX quality predicts developer migration. Developer activity is the leading indicator.
Standards Bodies
Dig Deeper
🗃️ EVM Contracts
7 items
🗃️ SVM Programs
3 items
📄️ SUI
Move is a platform-agnostic programming language originally developed by Facebook for the Libra blockchain, designed to be the "JavaScript of web3". Move provides standard libraries within modules that expose common functionalities and types including cryptography, math, and strings. These standard libraries have been formally verified with the Move Prover.
Context
- Developer Experience — DX scoring framework and crypto comparison methodology
- Sui Technical — Object model, Move language, agent economy primitives
- Crypto Problems — What keeps going wrong and why
- Blockchain Decisions — Which chain for which use case
- Agent Commerce — The standards war for agent transactions