ConsenSys, a developer of decentralized applications and end-user tools for blockchain ecosystems, has announced the support for Ethereum's high-level programming language, Solidity into Visual Studio as a Decentralized Application project type.

"Today we are pleased to announce that it is now possible to program Solidity smart contracts in one of the industry's most pervasive, capable and elegant integrated development environments, Visual Studio”, said Joseph Lubin, Co-Founder of Ethereum, Founder of ConsenSys.

The integration will be revealed at //Build, in San Francisco on March 29th-April 2nd, which will be attended by Ethereum co-founders Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Lubin.

With this integration, ConsenSys and Microsoft aim to enable millions of developers to rapidly build smart contract-based applications for the public Ethereum blockchain, as well as private and consortium blockchain deployments based on Ethereum.

"This integration with Visual Studio will offer developers enterprise-grade solutions with advanced capabilities for teams working on blockchain Smart Contract projects of any size and complexity. We are excited to continue to support the development and innovation of the distributed ledger ecosystem”, said Marley Gray, Director of BizDev & Strategy for Blockchain at Microsoft Corp.

Solidity is a javascript-like programming language designed for developing smart contract programs that run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It enables developers to write applications that implement self-enforcing business logic embodied in smart contracts, leaving a non-repudiable and authoritative record of transactions.

Visual Studio is a rich, integrated development environment for creating applications for Windows, Android, and iOS, as well as modern web applications and cloud services.

"Making it easier for developers to build applications on top of Ethereum through developer tools has always been one of our primary interests and focuses, and the integration of Solidity in Visual Studio will help bring Ethereum to a very large developer community. I am looking forward to seeing the results that this collaboration will bring”, said Vitalik Buterin, Inventor of Ethereum.

Microsoft collaborated with ConsenSys to offer businesses Ethereum Blockchain-as-a-Service on Microsoft Azure last year. Lubin said that with single click deployment of Ethereum blockchains on the Microsoft Azure cloud available, and the latest integration with Visual Studio will enable developers to get to work on their applications immediately ‘without having to deal with the complexity of first standing up a development blockchain’.