The x/wasm module (opens in a new tab), the root of CosmWasm, is a Cosmos SDK (opens in a new tab) module enabling smart contracts to execute on the CosmWasm virtual machine. CosmWasm itself refers to the whole ecosystem built around it with a mission to make smart contracts development easy and reliable. The focuses of the CosmWasm platform are security, performance, and interoperability. It is tailored for a tight integration with Cosmos SDK and to build IBC contracts.
We chose to target a Rust programming language as a smart contract development stack, as it is popular amonst blockchain developers and has the best Wasm compiler on the market so far. We do not provide bindings to help write smart contracts in another stack that compiles to Wasm, and we don't support that.
Here is where to find CosmWasm in the whole Cosmos stack:
The important thing about CosmWasm smart contracts is their transparency. Every smart contract instance has its unique address on the chain, and it can act just like any other account on chain. It is easy to implement communication between two smart contracts on the same chain. CosmWasm standard library provides simple utilities to communicate with non-CosmWasm modules on the chain. That includes common Cosmos modules like bank or staking and any custom module unique for a particular chain. Finally, CosmWasm is built around the IBC (opens in a new tab) and provides a simple API to communicate with other chains and contracts using IBC-based protocols.
This documentation already covers most of the stack. Still, some parts are a work in progress. If there is something you remember being here in the old documentation, you can find its content at https://github.com/CosmWasm/docs-deprecated (opens in a new tab). Remember that the old documentation is deprecated, mostly outdated, and will not be maintained. We would appreciate any GitHub issues about missing parts in the documentation repository (opens in a new tab).
It is worth noting about additional CosmWasm learning resources: