I think Solidity, and hence Ethereum as a smart contracts platform, really took off because Solidity is easy to get started with. More formal languages make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but ... devs don't use them.

The trouble with appealing to the middling devs, of course, is that you end up with middling code, and middling smart contract code is how to shoot yourself in the foot.

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/ethereum-smart-contract...