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This seems as good a place as any to ask: why is Rust so popular with cryptocurrency enthusiasts? I currently do consulting for a well-known company in the cry

This seems as good a place as any to ask: why is Rust so popular with cryptocurrency enthusiasts? I currently do consulting for a well-known company in the cryptocurrency space, and since I have done, I've noticed that Rust's adoption in this industry is far, far higher than anywhere else. I regularly get inquiries to do work in Rust there, but basically nowhere else.

saurik 7y ago
When you are writing software that you just _know_ is going to be used to store and manage money as its primary purpose, that means there are direct monetary benefits to people who can find exploits in your software: it isn't "maybe some government wants this" but "with an exploit I can directly steal a hundred million dollars and I would likely be unable to be caught". That makes you paranoid about getting the security correct.
- icxa 7y ago
  So why rust then? Rust does not have a specification and it is currently still under heavy development, with many changes to the language expected to come out in the years to come. As many have put it before me, all of rust is technically undefined behavior. Change my mind -- I like the language, but I prefer those that have specifications and have multiple implementations so that the behavior is verified.
  - nz21 7y ago
    > ...all of rust is undefined behavior Do you have any links or an explanation that elaborates on this?
    - jakear 7y ago
      There’s no spec. A more accurate statement might be “all of Rust is implementation-defined behavior”.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - scabarott 7y ago
        There is a spec, just not a formal fixed in time one. There's only one reference implementation so that might as well be taken as the de-facto spec.
        jakear 7y ago
        That’s what I said. What’s your point?
  - staticassertion 7y ago
    > all of rust is technically undefined behavior. Even if this is technically true (and I'm not really convinced that it is) it is not practically meaningful.
steveklabnik 7y ago
I can’t find the posts now, but MaidSafe switched over after their CEO gave Rust a try and was extremely impressed; this was back in 2014? You might want to dig into that, they explained their reasons at the time. WebAssembly has also been on an upward trajectory in this space, and so there’s some synergy there too.
staticassertion 7y ago
I think it's probably something along the lines of: * Rust meets basic constraints (performance, reliability) * A few early movers chose rust, and they likely share information and libraries, so it makes sense to just go in on it Given that cryptocurrency is a fairly young space, having everyone leveraging the same tooling probably increases productivity. One day someone might say "We can get more productive if we leverage Language X, let's invest there", but until then everyone else is probably thinking "Oh, the libraries I need are in Rust, guess I'll use Rust".

saurik 7y ago

When you are writing software that you just _know_ is going to be used to store and manage money as its primary purpose, that means there are direct monetary benefits to people who can find exploits in your software: it isn't "maybe some government wants this" but "with an exploit I can directly steal a hundred million dollars and I would likely be unable to be caught". That makes you paranoid about getting the security correct.

icxa 7y ago
So why rust then? Rust does not have a specification and it is currently still under heavy development, with many changes to the language expected to come out in the years to come. As many have put it before me, all of rust is technically undefined behavior. Change my mind -- I like the language, but I prefer those that have specifications and have multiple implementations so that the behavior is verified.
- nz21 7y ago
  > ...all of rust is undefined behavior Do you have any links or an explanation that elaborates on this?
  - jakear 7y ago
    There’s no spec. A more accurate statement might be “all of Rust is implementation-defined behavior”.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - scabarott 7y ago
      There is a spec, just not a formal fixed in time one. There's only one reference implementation so that might as well be taken as the de-facto spec.
      - jakear 7y ago
        That’s what I said. What’s your point?
- staticassertion 7y ago
  > all of rust is technically undefined behavior. Even if this is technically true (and I'm not really convinced that it is) it is not practically meaningful.

steveklabnik 7y ago

I can’t find the posts now, but MaidSafe switched over after their CEO gave Rust a try and was extremely impressed; this was back in 2014? You might want to dig into that, they explained their reasons at the time. WebAssembly has also been on an upward trajectory in this space, and so there’s some synergy there too.

staticassertion 7y ago

I think it's probably something along the lines of: * Rust meets basic constraints (performance, reliability) * A few early movers chose rust, and they likely share information and libraries, so it makes sense to just go in on it Given that cryptocurrency is a fairly young space, having everyone leveraging the same tooling probably increases productivity. One day someone might say "We can get more productive if we leverage Language X, let's invest there", but until then everyone else is probably thinking "Oh, the libraries I need are in Rust, guess I'll use Rust".