What are the trade-off of using near-evm solidity contract compared to near native rust/assemblyscript?

Question

What are the trade-off of using near-evm solidity contract compared to near native rust/assemblyscript?

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Answer 1

The first big tradeoff current is the cost of gas. Since the EVM is itself a smart contract you pay for not just running the solidity contract, but also the VM that runs it.

The benefit is that you have access to the solidity ecosystem which is bigger than the Rust/AS space for smart contracts. There are plans to add the EVM natively along side the Wasm VM so that the cost of running solidity contracts becomes comparable. However, unless you have a legacy solidity project that you want to move to NEAR, starting with Rust or AS is better for the long run.

If you are really worried about safety Rust is your best bet given its maturity and type safety guarantees. While AS currently produces the smallest smart contracts, but is a less mature language and has a smaller ecosystem of packages.