Marlowe is a robust, open-source technology that provides a special purpose language describing asset flows on blockchain. As a special purpose, domain-specific language (DSL) it offers a higher-level model of contracts than other Cardnao languages, albeit in a more restricted domain. This means that we can provide safety guarantees, such as no assets being held in a script indefinitely, simply by the design of the language, and others, such as tools to fully analyze for contract faults before running a contract.
Marlowe core technology has been audited, and it supports contracts on mainnet as well as in pre-production; its Runtime enables all the necessary on- and off-chain contract activity, including the tedious work of transaction construction; and the TypeScript SDK supports Marlowe as a component within a complete DApp. It is thus a smart contract technology that is complementary to Aiken, PlutusTx or Scalus, and abstracts away from the complexities of Cardano and provides a local, account-based model like Ethereum.
Marlowe is transitioning from an IOG-managed solution to a fully open-source, community maintained project. While IOG is providing funding/resources to help manage the transition and maintain its core capabilities in the interim, going forward Marlowe will need to sustain itself independently with community funding. For more details see our blog The past, present, and future of Marlowe: a journey of innovation and community empowerment
As its core maintainers, we will continue to support Marlowe, to consolidate and extend it to make it an option for Cardano DApp builders. Our roadmap for 2025 is defined in details our Marlowe 2025 F12 Catalyst Proposal
Other developments run alongside this bid. We are working with IOG to move the Marlowe repositories to this independent GitHub organization, and to coordinate community activity and interest by means of a Marlowe Special Interest Group, supported by a new, members-based, non-profit organization.
This Github organization will reference all the core projects related to Marlowe. The following IOG repositories will soon be transferred here :
- marlowe
- marlowe-cardano
- marlowe-plutus
- marlowe-playground
- marlowe-runner
- marlowe-ts-sdk
- marlowe-scan
- marlowe-starter-kit
- marlowe-doc
- awesome-marlowe
- real-world-marlowe
- marlowe-order-book-swap
- marlowe-ts-dapp-swap
- marlowe-payouts
- marlowe-token-plans
- marlowe-agda
- marlowe-actus-labs
- marlowe-lambda
- marlowe-hydra-poc
- actus-core
- purescript-datetime-iso
- purescript-markdown
- MIPs
- purescript-marlowe
- purescript-bridge-json-helpers
- purescript-cardano-multiplatform-lib
- purescript-cardano-wallet-client
- purescript-marlowe-runtime-client
- purescript-web-common
- marlowe-cardano-minimal
As Part of this transition, we are moving also our infrastructure, here are the new URLs :
- Marlowe Playground
- Runners
- Runtimes:
Be part of the journey and join our welcoming community on Discord.
Follow us on Twitter @marlowe_io for updates and chats about the future of Marlowe.
