
A Rust-based smart contract language and framework for building secure, efficient contracts on Polkadot and Substrate.
ink! is a smart contract language and framework designed for the Polkadot ecosystem, enabling developers to write smart contracts in Rust. It leverages Rust's safety and performance features to provide secure and efficient contract execution on Substrate-based blockchains like Polkadot and Kusama. ink! supports modular and reusable contract components, facilitating composability and faster development cycles. It integrates tightly with the Polkadot SDK and offers a comprehensive set of macros and attributes to define contract storage, messages, constructors, and events.
The framework includes built-in support for testing with an end-to-end testing environment and low-level interfaces for interacting with the contract executor. ink! also offers native compatibility with Solidity contracts and tooling such as MetaMask, bridging the Rust and Solidity ecosystems. This compatibility allows developers to combine Rust's security with Solidity's extensive tooling and community. Additionally, ink! contracts run on PolkaVM, a RISC-V based virtual machine optimized for fast execution and lower gas costs.
Developers can get started quickly by following the detailed setup guides and tutorials available on the official documentation site. The project is open source under the Apache License 2.0 and maintains active development with a strong community presence on GitHub, Telegram, Discord, and X (Twitter). ink! is well-suited for teams building DeFi applications, enterprise blockchain solutions, and infrastructure components within the Polkadot ecosystem.
Developers building smart contracts on Polkadot and Substrate face challenges in writing secure, efficient, and composable contracts. Existing contract languages may lack Rust's safety guarantees or interoperability with Solidity tooling, limiting developer productivity and ecosystem integration.
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Open Source | |
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| Price (Monthly) | Free |
| Price (Annual) | Free |
| Messaging | N/A |
| Support | Community support via GitHub, Telegram, Discord |
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Reliable RPC, powerful APIs, and zero hassle.
ink! provides extensive resources including comprehensive documentation, tutorials, example contracts, and community support channels to help developers build and deploy smart contracts efficiently.
Provides macros like #[ink::contract], #[ink(storage)], #[ink(message)], and others to define contract structure and behavior.
Runs contracts on a fast, gas-efficient RISC-V virtual machine optimized for Polkadot.
Includes tools for off-chain and on-chain contract testing to ensure reliability.
Developers use ink! to write secure, performant smart contracts for decentralized finance applications interoperable across Polkadot parachains.
Enterprise teams leverage ink! to create modular, auditable contracts with Rust’s safety guarantees for private or consortium blockchains built on Substrate.
Projects use ink! to build contracts compatible with Solidity tooling, enabling integration with Ethereum-based assets and wallets like MetaMask.
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