<p>
Rust has a number of kinds of smart pointers, both in the standard
library and defined by users. Still, some operations that are possible with
built-in references are not possible to perform with user-defined smart
pointers. Tyler Mandry, lead of the Rust project's
<a href="https://rust-lang.org/governance/teams/#team-lang">
language team</a>, spoke at
<a href="https://rustconf.com/">
RustConf 2026</a> about the lengthy effort to change that, and make smart pointers
just as flexible as built-in references.
</p>