Rust Contracts

⚠️

The Rust SDK is experimental. Support and bug fixes are low priority compared to the Python SDK. See genlayer_sdk on crates.io for the latest published version.

GenLayer supports writing intelligent contracts in Rust via the genlayer_sdk (opens in a new tab) crate. Rust contracts compile to WebAssembly (wasm32-wasip1) and run inside GenVM just like Python contracts.

Why Rust?

Performance -- Rust compiles to efficient WebAssembly with no runtime overhead.
Type safety -- The storage system leverages Rust's type system to catch errors at compile time.
Low-level control -- Direct access to GenVM host functions when needed.

How It Works

Rust contracts implement the Contract trait (or the higher-level ContractExt trait), which defines handlers for GenVM's three entry points:

Main -- regular contract method calls and deployment
Sandbox -- isolated execution context
ConsensusStage -- leader/validator consensus for non-deterministic operations

The contract_main! macro generates the main function that bridges GenVM's WASI interface to your trait implementation.

Prerequisites

Rust toolchain (stable)
The wasm32-wasip1 target:
```
rustup target add wasm32-wasip1
```

Ideas Your First Contract