IntersectMBO · zliu41 · Sep 18, 2024 · Sep 16, 2024 · Sep 17, 2024 · Sep 17, 2024
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+# Plutus Core and Plutus Tx
+
+Understanding the roles and relationships between different languages is key to the effective and efficient development of smart contracts.
+
+## Untyped Plutus Core
+
+Untyped Plutus Core (UPLC), also known simply as Plutus Core or Plutus, is a low-level, Turing-complete language based on untyped lambda calculus, a simple and well-established computational model that dates back to the 1930s.
+Thanks to its simplicity and extensive academic research, the need for updates or modifications to the language over time is minimal, ensuring long-term stability.
+It also facilitates the creation of simple, formally verified evaluators.
+
+Along with UPLC and its evaluator, we provide a compiler from Plutus Tx, a subset of Haskell, to UPLC.
+However, UPLC can be an easy compilation target for any language that supports functional-style programming, in particular immutable data and higher-order functions, both of which are widely adopted today in programming languages, and are particularly suited to Cardano's UTXO ledger model, where UTXOs are immutable.
+
+UPLC is the code that runs on-chain, i.e., by every node validating the transaction, using an interpreter known as the CEK machine.
+A UPLC program included in a Cardano transaction is often referred to as a Plutus script or a Plutus validator.
+
+### Typed Plutus Core and Plutus IR
+
+Typed Plutus Core (TPLC) is the intrinsically typed counterpart of UPLC.
+It is based on higher-order polymorphic lambda calculus (System Fω).
+TPLC serves as a low-level intermediate representation (IR) for the Plutus Tx compiler.
+TPLC is closely related to UPLC, and compiling TPLC into UPLC is simply a matter of erasing types.
+
+Plutus IR (PIR) is a high-level IR also used by the Plutus Tx compiler.
+It extends TPLC by adding recursive bindings and recursive data types.
+The fact that recursion is explicit in PIR, rather than encoded using fixed point operators as in TPLC and UPLC, makes PIR significantly more readable than TPLC and UPLC.
+When optimizing the cost or size of Plutus scripts written in Plutus Tx, it is usually useful to look into PIR.
+
+## Plutus Tx
+
+Plutus Tx, the primary focus of this user guide, is a high-level language for writing the validation logic of the contract, the logic that determines whether a transaction is allowed to perform things such as spending a UTXO, minting or burning assets, and more.
+Plutus Tx is not a new language, but rather a subset of Haskell, and it is compiled into UPLC.
+
+There are several other high-level languages available as alternatives to Plutus Tx, all of which compile to UPLC.
+See [Overview of Languages Compiling to UPLC](../delve-deeper/languages.md) for more information.
+
+## Further reading
+
+The formal details of Plutus Core are in its [specification](https://github.com/IntersectMBO/plutus#specifications-and-design).
+
+The design is discussed in our [technical report](https://plutus.cardano.intersectmbo.org/resources/plutus-report.pdf).
+
+PIR is discussed in [_Unraveling recursion: compiling an IR with recursion to System F_](https://iohk.io/en/research/library/papers/unraveling-recursion-compiling-an-ir-with-recursion-to-system-f/).
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 # Plutus platform