Plutus language changes

Language versions

See the documentation on language versions for an explanation of what they are.

Plutus V1

PlutusV1 was the initial version of Plutus, introduced in the Alonzo hard fork.

Plutus V2

PlutusV2 was introduced in the Vasil hard fork.

The main changes in PlutusV2 were to the interface to scripts. The ScriptContext was extended to include the following information:

• The full “redeemers” structure, which contains all the redeemers used in the transaction

• Reference inputs in the transaction (proposed in CIP-31)

• Inline datums in the transaction (proposed in CIP-32)

• Reference scripts in the transaction (proposed in CIP-33)

Examples

• Plutus V2 functionalities

• How to use reference inputs

• How to use inline datums

• How to reference scripts

• How to use collateral outputs

Built-in functions and types

Built-in functions and types can be introduced with just a hard fork. In some cases they are also available only in particular language versions. This section indicates in which hard fork particular built-ins were introduced, and any language version constraints.

Alonzo

This is when the majority of the built-in types and functions were added to PlutusV1. You can find an enumeration of them in IOHK [6].

Vasil

All of the built-in types and functions from PlutusV1 were added to PlutusV2.

The following built-in function was added to PlutusV2 only (i.e., it is not available in PlutusV1).

• serializeData (proposed in CIP-42)