Astar Network Launches Second Iteration of Smart Contracts

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Astar Network Launches Second Iteration of Smart Contracts, Supporting Ethereum Virtual Machine and WebAssembly Virtual Machine

Astar Network, a multichain decentralized application (DApp) protocol, has announced the launch of the second iteration of its smart contracts on its mainnet on April 6. This iteration will support both Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and WebAssembly Virtual Machine (WASM VM), and the Astar team claims that having both virtual machines and allowing interactions between the two is a «key success factor» in an emerging layer-1 blockchain.

According to the Astar team, even though the Ethereum network brought about the Web3 revolution through smart contracts, it cannot build the future of blockchain on its own. Therefore, Astar Network is offering an alternative for developers who want to utilize the benefits of both EVM and WASM VM.

To celebrate the launch, the Astar team has invited community members to a panel discussion led by its executives and various Polkadot developers to discuss how WASM can be utilized. The company will also meet with its infrastructure partners who will build the foundations for the WASM environment.

This announcement comes as Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Polygon has recently released its zkEVM beta to its mainnet, allowing developers to deploy smart contracts at lower costs. Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal described zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs as the “holy grail of Ethereum scaling.” The release of Polygon's zkEVM beta and Astar Network's launch of its second iteration of smart contracts both offer alternative solutions for developers who want to utilize the benefits of Ethereum scaling.

Meanwhile, the Web3 Foundation, the team behind Polkadot, has once