The Nomic Foundation released slang, a Solidity compiler independent of solc, with an alpha plugin for Hardhat 3 called hardhat-slang, according to an article published on November 5, 2026, at 05:44:29 UTC+8.
For developers evaluating it, the key distinction is between faster compilation and deployment readiness: the source reports substantial compilation speedups, but says the compiler is not yet suitable for mainnet deployments.
Reported performance
The article reports the following benchmark results compared with solc:
- 40× faster compilation on average in via-IR mode.
- 8.7× faster compilation in legacy mode.
- Up to 79× faster compilation for some repositories.
These gains primarily come from the compilation stage. Test execution time is reported to be similar to forge, so the compilation figures should not be read as equivalent improvements in test execution speed.
Architecture and Solidity support
Slang uses a custom frontend, an MLIR intermediate layer and an LLVM backend. It supports Solidity 0.8.0 and later, with a single binary capable of compiling across multiple versions.
What remains incomplete
The source says slang can currently compile valid code reliably and reports an approximately 99.97% pass rate in Sourcify testing. However, error diagnostics and code verification remain incomplete.
Those limitations matter when assessing the alpha: the reported compilation results do not establish mainnet readiness. The supplied article does not include installation commands or a reproducible benchmark procedure.
Original article — published November 5, 2026, at 05:44:29 UTC+8.