Parallel execution of transactions that don’t affect overlapping state is a promising blockchain scaling technology needed for widespread adoption without sacrificing user experience and fragmenting liquidity. Solana, with its Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), has pioneered that approach of simultaneous execution instead of purely sequential execution. With the dominant Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), this approach is more complicated. Recently, there are promising projects that try to overcome this hurdle to offer developers the possibility to create their applications in a familiar EVM environment, but with the performance of Solana.
In this article we look at Monad, Sei v2, Neon EVM and Eclipse - four promising projects that work on such parallelized EVM solutions. We will delve into how those networks are designed, their advantages and disadvantages and look at how well those parallelized blockchains are set-up for the future.
The Promise of Parallel EVMs
Without a doubt, Ethereum is the most widely adopted smart contract blockchain, boasting the strongest community and ecosystem. However,while Ethereum is making relentless efforts to ensure scalability, the shift from sharding to roll-ups has made it challenging to envision Ethereum sufficiently scalable as a base layer. While the roll-up centric approach can be a solution to scalability, it doesn’t come without downsides. Fragmented liquidity and poor user experience caused by interacting with many different blockchains instead of one will be a massive barrier to overcome.
What if the Ethereum we know achieved 10,000 TPS or more in another parallel universe? Monad, Sei, Neon and Eclipse are fully EVM compatible blockchains that leverage parallel execution to achieve scalability.
Source: twitter.com/SeiNetwork
A Look at the Contenders
Monad is a high performance EVM blockchain, aimed at significantly enhancing the scalability and transaction speed through parallel execution. It has optimised four key areas, making it a high performance blockchain.
Monad BFT
MonadBFT is the consensus protocol used by the Monad blockchain to achieve agreement on the order of transactions. It allows many nodes in the network to securely agree on transaction order, even if some nodes are dishonest or offline. MonadBFT operates in a leader-based, two-phase commit fashion, collecting threshold signatures from 2f+1 validators which are aggregated into a single signature using pairing-based cryptography. This improves efficiency, scalability and reduces storage compared to individual signatures.
Deferred execution
Monad separates consensus and execution to improve performance. The consensus layer involves nodes agreeing on the ordering of transactions without executing them. The execution layer consists of nodes independently executing the ordered transactions to update state. By separating consensus and execution, Monad achieves faster consensus with larger transaction batches. Finality is single-slot (1 second) with execution lagging less than 1 second, enabling high transaction throughput on a single shard while ensuring consistency. This architecture decouples consensus and execution to optimise transaction ordering and processing.
Parallel execution
Monad enables parallel execution of transactions within a block to improve efficiency. It uses an optimistic approach, starting executions before previous ones complete. To handle incorrect results, Monad tracks inputs/outputs and re-executes transactions with inconsistencies. A static code analyzer predicts dependencies, avoiding invalid parallelism and reverting to simple mode when unsure. This parallel execution increases throughput while reducing transaction failures.
MonadDB
Monad performs asynchronous I/O (input/output operations like disk reads/writes) for parallel transaction execution, unlike traditional systems that have to wait for I/O results before processing the next transaction. With asynchronous I/O, the CPU can process other transactions without waiting for particular I/O results. MonadDb utilises advanced Linux kernel features for efficient asynchronous disk operations, eliminating throttling from synchronous I/O. Traditional Ethereum databases lack async I/O support, but MonadDb is built to leverage it fully. This asynchronous approach provides major efficiency gains in transaction processing while preserving Ethereum compatibility.
Sei V2 is a massive upgrade to the Sei network, aiming to become the first fully parallelized EVM. This upgrade will equip Sei with the following capabilities:
Source: sei.io
Backward Compatibility with EVM Smart Contracts
Developers will be able to deploy already audited smart contracts from other EVM-compatible chains without any code changes. Sei nodes will import Geth — the Go implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Geth will be used to process EVM transactions, and any resulting updates (including state updates or calls to non-EVM related contracts) will go through a special interface created by Sei for EVM. This is an important upgrade as it simplifies the process of moving existing smart contracts from other blockchains like Ethereum to Sei.
Optimistic Parallelisation
Like Monad, Sei v2 will use optimistic parallelization. This allows the blockchain to simultaneously execute transactions without the need for developers to define any dependencies. When conflicts arise (e.g., transactions touching the same state), the chain will track the storage parts each transaction touches and re-run these transactions in order. This process will continue recursively until all unresolved conflicts are resolved.
Sei DB
SeiDB is a new dual-component data structure to optimise storage and prevent blockchain bloat. It separates state storage from state commitment, transforming the traditional single IAVL tree design. This dual structure reduces latency and disk usage compared to a single tree, while improving multithreaded read-write performance.
Neon EVM is a fully compatible Ethereum environment solution built on the Solana blockchain. It operates as a smart contract within Solana, allowing developers to deploy Ethereum dApps without undertaking any reconfiguration.
Neon EVM enables Solidity- and Vyper-based dApps to tap into Solana’s network benefits: low fees, high transaction speeds, and parallel transaction execution capabilities.
This means creating Solana-compatible contracts using tools developers are familiar with from the Ethereum Ecosystem. Neon EVM makes the key Ethereum dApp tools compatible with Solana, including Vyper, Solidity, MetaMask. The solution allows any Ethereum application to run on Solana with minimal reconfiguration, this includes Uniswap, SushiSwap, 0x, and MakerDAO.
Source: docs.neonevm.org
Eclipse is a next generation optimistic Layer-2 solution on Ethereum powered by the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM). By integrating Ethereum's settlement capabilities with the high performance of the SVM and parallel execution, Eclipse Mainnet offers a blend of speed, scalability, and security. It aims to enhance transaction throughput while ensuring compatibility and security through its use of Ethereum for settlement and ETH as its gas token.
Designed to tackle Ethereum's scalability challenges, Eclipse leverages Celestia for data availability and RISC Zero for zero-knowledge proofs, aiming for greater transaction capacity without sacrificing security or decentralisation. That said, the team at Eclipse will continue to keep a close eye on Ethereum’s EIP-4844 upgrade and consider migrating to Ethereum’s DA in the future, which would further increase Eclipse's security.
The SVM and its Sealevel runtime enable parallel transaction execution. Like on Sei v2 and Monad, transactions which don’t touch an overlapping state can be executed in parallel rather than sequentially.
Source: Eclipse.builders
To achieve EVM compatibility, Eclipse will integrate Neon EVM. This will bring full EVM compatibility to the Eclipse mainnet (including Ethereum bytecode and the Ethereum JSON-RPC). Because each Neon EVM instance has its own local fee market, apps can just deploy their own contract to attain all the benefits of an app chain without fragmenting UX, security or liquidity. In this way, besides being a layer-2 network, Eclipse aims to become an infrastructure layer for a thriving layer 3 ecosystem. A trend leading layer-2 networks like Arbitrum and Base have been embarking on recently as well. Separately, the Solang compiler enables compilation of Solidity smart contracts code into SVM bytecode. This allows developers to deploy Solidity contracts on Eclipse without the need of using Neon EVM to launch their own layer-3.
The Comparison
Out of the two independent parallel EVM chains, Monad seems to get more attention. Despite much lower follower count compared to Sei, their posts generate more interactions and in recent Twitter spaces three times as many people showed up as in spaces hosted by Sei. This indicates that Monad has a more passionate and active community. Especially the Ethereum community seems to be very excited about its upcoming launch, which will put Monad into a great position to capture early hype and adoption.
Although Sei’s performance metrics seem higher than Monad’s and they are launching first, Sei gets less attention. Since the announcement of their parallelized EVM, Sei has gone on a massive rally, but the fact that it already launched as a CosmWASM chain earlier and has its coin circulating for a while gives it less the feeling of something new. Sei seems to have a weaker narrative than Monad and due to its Cosmos background it’s perceived less as an Ethereum project by members of the Ethereum community.
Thanks to Solana’s upcoming Firedancer validator client, Neon EVM and Eclipse will offer superior performance compared to Monad and Sei, exemplifying the performance deficiencies the EVM faces against the SVM, even once it is parallelized too. Despite this performance edge and having launched mainnet much earlier than the other projects, Neon struggles to find its place in the market. Early adoption numbers are very disappointing to say the least. This likely can be explained by the fact that Neon doesn’t really have a target audience. The Ethereum community is highly skeptical of Solana for its unreliability, lack of security and perceived lack of decentralisation. Consequently they’re not interested in interacting or launching applications on Solana. The Solana community on the other hand is happy using the SVM and shows no interest in switching to the EVM, which leaves Neon EVM in an awkward spot that no one is really interested in.
It will be interesting to see if Eclipse faces the same fate. As an Ethereum layer-2 it taps into the security, decentralisation and reliability of Ethereum. But due to running the Solana Virtual Machine at its base layer it might still face scepticism from the Ethereum community. Unifying the best of Ethereum and Solana, while also slotting neatly into the trend of modular blockchain design and supporting dApp specific layer 3 roll-ups, it seems that Eclipse would tick all the boxes of trends and narratives that are currently hot in Web3 though. Judging by its design, technology and performance, Eclipse should be perfectly positioned to create a strong narrative around their launch. Early signs are promising as Eclipse is gaining some momentum and is hiring more marketing professionals. It will be interesting to see if they can create real hype leading up to the mainnet launch.
Future Outlook
The Web3 space is highly competitive, with many layer-1 and layer-2 solutions fighting for attention. Success depends on more than just having the most advanced technology. Creating compelling narratives, building strong communities, and having developers launching exciting new applications on the network are equally important. This puts blockchains that excel in the latter in favourable positions.
Monad has best positioned itself in the upcoming parallel EVM narrative. Despite marginally lower performance than Sei, Monad is gaining the most hype and attention, and therefore seems to be in the prime position of the projects introduced in this article. However, crypto narratives fade quickly. Monad will have to capitalise on this short-term hype to bootstrap their ecosystem.
Beyond competing against each other, these contenders also will have to compete with Ethereum, its layer-2s, and second generation blockchains like Solana, Avalanche and Polygon. All of them have had significantly more time to develop their communities and ecosystems already. The appeal of the shiny new object, their innovative tech and impressive performance will likely give Monad, Sei and Eclipse attention when they launch. Long-term success will then depend if they can capitalise on this attention and get users and developers to stick around to develop their own thriving ecosystems and communities.
This article has been written and prepared by Lukasinho, a member of the GCR Research Team, a group of dedicated professionals with extensive knowledge and expertise in their field. Committed to staying current with industry developments and providing accurate and valuable information, GlobalCoinResearch.com is a trusted source for insightful news, research, and analysis.
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