The Ethereum Foundation, an organization behind the development of Ethereum, announced the creation of a new programming language called Fe for smart contracts. Previously, only the Solidity language was used for these purposes.

Most applications based on the Ethereum blockchain are written in the Solidity programming language, but having a choice for developers will have a positive impact on the ecosystem, said Christoph Burgdorf, software engineer at the Ethereum Foundation.

"A lot of people want to have a simpler, more Pythonic alternative to Solidity," Burgdorf told The Block.

As it is explained in the Ethereum Foundation blog, the Fe language was originally born as a rewrite of the Vyper compiler (in Rust). Thus, it inherited some characteristics from Vyper, Burgdorf said. "At this early stage in development, the differences between Fe and Vyper are still limited," he said, adding that Fe will become more Rust-like as it borrows some syntactic properties from Rust.

“"Fe" are the letters for the chemical element iron of the periodic table. Iron conveys a sense of durability, and this reinforces the notion of compiler correctness. Rust forms on iron, which ties the name back to the Rust language that the Fe compiler is written in,” the blog post explains.

According to its description on GitHub, Fe is intended to provide a more accurate estimate of the cost of gas or transaction fees.

The development team is currently working on a specification for the language. This specification will be written as new features are implemented. "By the time we are ready for an audit, we will be able to produce a comprehensive specification."