Consensys and Microsoft have recently announced that the Ethereum Solidity contract programming language will become available in the Microsoft Visual Studio integrated development environment. This collaboration between developers was made to enable them to create smart contract-based applications for the Ethereum public blockchain as well as Ethereum implementations of private and consortium-based blockchains.
Vitalik Buterin, Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin and Consensys Enterprise Director Andrew Keys at the Microsoft //Build pre-conference reception
This integration is achieved through the Visual Studio Extension tool. It sets up a project with sample smart contract code, creates ABI files for deployment, offers context-sensitive menus to build and deploy smart contracts, and creates an automatically generated user interface for testing.
This isn’t the first time that Microsoft has shown interest in Ethereum technologies. Microsoft has been offering Ethereum Blockchain as a Service since November 2015, and it includes the BlockApps Stratum Ethereum toolkit as well as other Ethereum applications, such as the Decentralized KYC system Cetas, the Augur prediction market, ether.camp and the slock.it IoT platform. We look forward to continuing this collaboration with Microsoft in order to make Ethereum blockchain technology accessible to everyone.
