Viem

Viem is a modern, modular, and type-safe TypeScript library for interacting with Ethereum and EVM-compatible blockchains, developed by the Parade team (Tom Meagher and others) as a next-generation alternative to ethers.js and web3.js. Launched in 2023, Viem was designed from the ground up to address the pain points developers experienced with older Ethereum libraries: bloated bundle sizes, inconsistent TypeScript support, lack of tree-shaking, and confusing APIs. Viem distinguishes itself through several key design principles: a granular module architecture where each function and class is independently importable and tree-shakeable, resulting in significantly smaller production bundles compared to ethers.js; first-class TypeScript support with end-to-end type safety derived directly from ABIs, meaning the compiler knows the exact function signatures, parameter types, and return types of any smart contract method; performance optimizations including optimized ABI encoding and decoding, efficient batching of JSON-RPC requests, and minimal overhead for common operations; and a clean, predictable API that follows functional programming patterns. Core modules include Clients (combining a Chain, Transport, and optional Account), Actions (granular functions like getBalance, sendTransaction, readContract, writeContract), Transports (HTTP, WebSocket, Fallback), Chains (predefined configurations for 100+ networks), and Accounts (private key, HD Wallet, JSON-RPC). The project also maintains Wagmi, a collection of React Hooks built on top of Viem for seamless dApp development. As of 2026, Viem has over 2,800 GitHub stars.