Building on Ethereum has long been a challenge for developers. While the blockchain offers extensive possibilities, creating applications requires advanced knowledge of Solidity and management of infrastructure like wallets, RPC endpoints, storage, and indexing. Scaling an application and maintaining users adds further complications, including high costs and security concerns. Many teams struggle to move beyond initial development stages.
thirdweb aims to reduce these barriers. As a web3 development platform, it allows teams to deploy applications, games, and AI agents without needing extensive blockchain experience. By offering tools for wallets, smart contracts, crypto payments, cross-chain bridging, and on-chain data queries, thirdweb streamlines the development process and supports teams that may not be native to crypto.
Thirdweb Integrates Arbitrum Stylus
Making Smart Contracts More Accessible
The team at thirdweb identified a common issue in the blockchain space: many projects spend significant time recreating standard components such as token contracts, payment flows, and airdrop mechanisms. This focus on repetitive infrastructure work leaves little room for innovation. thirdweb provides prebuilt tools and templates, allowing developers to focus on building unique features rather than reinventing core components.
Leveraging Stylus for Performance and Flexibility
thirdweb has partnered with Arbitrum Stylus to improve its smart contract capabilities. Stylus allows developers to write contracts in Rust, C, C++, and other WebAssembly (WASM) languages while remaining fully compatible with Ethereum’s EVM. This integration broadens the range of developers who can work on blockchain applications and improves contract performance.
According to Yash Kumar, an engineer at thirdweb, Stylus “enhances and transforms the developer experience with language interoperability, performant execution, and cost-efficient tools. These benefits make airdrops, proofs, and other contracts more efficient as the underlying tech for apps looking to scale.”
Stylus enables thirdweb to create more efficient airdrop contracts for ERC-20, ERC-721, and ERC-1155 tokens, supporting bulk airdrops, Merkle claims, and signed airdrops using EIP-712. The platform handles computationally heavy tasks such as hashing and proof verification, while standard EVM calls manage token transfers to maintain compatibility. Stylus also allows developers to use Rust crates for cryptography and math operations and supports strongly typed traits for safer cross-contract calls.
Thirdweb Integrates Arbitrum Stylus
Efficiency Gains for Compute-Heavy Tasks
thirdweb has reported measurable gas savings when using Stylus for compute-intensive tasks. Operations like hashing, parsing, and Merkle proof verification run more efficiently, reducing costs by roughly 10% for Merkle claim computations and saving up to half a million gas in large airdrops. While storage operations still account for the majority of costs, Stylus provides tangible improvements in contract execution efficiency.
Kumar added, “We have seen gas savings on compute-heavy code that actually does work. This is where our Merkle verification and EIP-712 hashing benefit most.”
Thirdweb Integrates Arbitrum Stylus
Future Development with Stylus
thirdweb has fully integrated Stylus support into its platform, including template contracts and prebuilt airdrop workflows. Looking ahead, the team is focusing on zero-knowledge-based minting contracts and modular minting components, both of which are expected to take advantage of Stylus’s performance and cost efficiency. Developers interested in deploying prebuilt Stylus contracts can explore thirdweb’s documentation. Additionally, thirdweb offers one free month of its Growth Plan for developers building with Stylus using the promo code STYLUS-GROWTH.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is thirdweb? thirdweb is a web3 development platform that helps developers create blockchain applications, games, and AI agents without managing complex infrastructure or needing advanced Solidity skills.
What is Arbitrum Stylus? Arbitrum Stylus is a tool that allows developers to write smart contracts in Rust, C, C++, and other WebAssembly languages while remaining compatible with Ethereum’s EVM. It improves contract performance and reduces computation costs.
How does thirdweb use Stylus? thirdweb integrates Stylus to create more efficient airdrop contracts, optimize compute-heavy operations, and enable developers to import external libraries and use typed traits for safer cross-contract interactions.
What are the benefits of Stylus for developers? Stylus provides faster contract execution, cost savings on gas for computational tasks, and access to a broader range of programming languages for contract development.
Can non-crypto-native teams use thirdweb? Yes. thirdweb is designed to simplify blockchain development so that even teams without prior crypto experience can deploy reliable applications on-chain.
How can developers start using Stylus with thirdweb? Developers can access thirdweb’s documentation for prebuilt Stylus contracts. New users can also redeem a free month of the Growth Plan using the promo code STYLUS-GROWTH.
