Original author | francesco

Compiled by | Odaily Planet Daily Golem

The long-awaited Sei V2 was launched on May 27. This article will introduce Sei V2 and the importance of transaction parallelization in improving blockchain scalability and solving the problems faced by most EVM chains.

EVM performance requirements

The emergence of high-speed chains like Sei stems from the limitations of the EVM network in the following two aspects:

  • Trading Cap

  • High Gas Fees

These limitations restrict the potential applications of blockchain. For example, it is not possible to launch an on-chain game on Ethereum because it is too expensive and the chain cannot process transactions fast enough to support in-game transactions.

Therefore, the speed at which transactions are processed is important.

Sei is the result of technological innovation in this field, and has the following unique features:

  • Twin-Turbo Consensus

  • Transaction Parallelization

Other chains that have adopted a similar design approach include Solana, SUI, Aptos, and Monad. In addition, with the development of Sei V2, Sei is also being completely transformed. What does this mean for blockchains that adopt a parallelized architecture?

At the same time, with the market consensus on parallelized blockchain projects fragmented, is Sei undervalued considering the launch of Sei V2?

Sei V2 Introduction

The Sei mainnet will be launched in August 2023. It is a POS protocol based on Tendermint on the Cosmos IBC stack.

Since its launch, Sei has the following advantages over other blockchains:

  • Its TPS is always above 45 transactions per second, which is higher than most L1 or L2.

  • Stable daily transaction volume (over 4 million);

  • The block time is only 390 milliseconds, making it one of the fastest blockchains currently;

  • There were no interruptions or downtime during operations.

The deployment of V2 helps Sei become the "first parallelized EVM blockchain". This update makes Sei code compatible with the EVM and opens it up to EVM developers. These developers can enjoy EVM tools and compatibility while taking advantage of the following benefits of the Sei technology stack:

  • It will become easier to deploy existing or new protocols on Sei: developers will be able to deploy any EVM-compatible audited contract without making any changes.

  • Allows "optimistic parallelization": the current Sei implementation requires developers to define the state used by smart contracts, which increases transaction friction. Sei V2 will optimistically run all transactions in parallel (assuming they are correct). If a conflict occurs, the transaction will be isolated, tracked, and rerun: transactions that touch different parts of storage will be rerun in parallel, and transactions that touch the same state will be rerun in sequence. This process will continue until all conflicts are resolved.

Optimistic parallelism

  • SeiDB improves state storage: SeiDB is based on the Cosmos team’s ADR-065 and provides faster and more efficient storage for Sei, improving efficiency and reducing latency compared to the previous vanilla database.

    SeiDB's major improvements over Sei

SeiDB commits all transaction states asynchronously, ensuring that commit latency remains stable no matter how many transactions are processed.

  • Interoperability: In Sei V2, all transactions are first processed as Sei transactions, and then filtered and sent to the appropriate virtual machines and chain storage modules for a better development experience while having EVM compatibility.

Sei V2 interoperability

Also in Sei V2, the previous monolithic database was split into two components, improving the latency of RPC nodes, reducing disk usage of stored data, and improving recovery capabilities in the event of a network crash.

  1. State Commitment (SC): Stores active chain state data in a memory-mapped Merkle tree, providing fast transaction status access and Merkle hash calculation.

  2. State Storage (SS): Specifically designed and optimally tuned for full nodes and archive nodes to provide historical query services.

Sei V2 Vision

The launch of SEI V2 represents the second phase of the roadmap. In this phase, developers can deploy EVM contracts in the days before the release of V2 Beta, and any application built on the EVM chain will be able to be deployed on Sei.

Sei V2 Roadmap

Furthermore, the synergy between EVM and CosmWasm on Sei creates a dynamic environment where developers can leverage the strengths of both ecosystems. Features such as pointer contracts and precompiled contracts facilitate seamless interaction between different execution environments, ensuring that applications can take full advantage of all blockchain capabilities provided by EVM and CosmWasm. This interoperability is critical to enhancing the user and developer experience, making Sei a versatile and powerful platform that stands out in the competitive blockchain space.

Currently, Sei offers cheaper transaction costs and higher throughput than other similar blockchains.

Impact of V2 Upgrade on Tokens

SEI token basics:

  • Market cap: $1.5 billion

  • Total supply: 10 billion

  • Circulating Supply: 8.74 billion

  • Staked supply: 5.93 billion (67% of total supply)

From a value-added perspective, the V2 upgrade as a catalyst could cause SEI tokens to rise, especially considering that SEI does not have any token unlocks until August 2024 and is therefore not subject to token unlock selling pressure.

Some upcoming projects at Sei

SEI’s current TVL is $27.85 million. Here are some of the projects that will be launched on Sei:

  • Decentralized exchanges: Jellyverse, DragonSwap, Uniswap, Bancor, Vermillion;

  • Staking: Silo, FRAX, EtherFi, Diva (Nektar), Kryptonite;

  • NFT projects: Seiyans, Redmilio, Pallet, Webump;

  • Launch platforms: Meme.trade, Sejin App, Fjord Finance;

  • Lending: Monna, YEI.