Alt-VMs will overtake EVM execution: parallel VMs on modular L2s
Quote392 words
Argues EVM dominance (96% of DeFi TVL per DefiLlama, 20+ chains) is limited by sequential execution, and modular DA makes parallel alt-VMs such as SVM, MoveVM and WASM viable as Ethereum-settled L2s. Predicts 2024 as the year of alt-VMs.
Key claims
EVM apps account for 96% of DeFi TVL per DefiLlama
EVM executes one transaction at a time
Alt-VMs will overtake EVM execution, probably this cycle
Alt-VMs will overtake EVM execution.
Probably already this cycle. 🚀 ✨
Are you positioned for it anon? 👀 👇
Ethereum has paved the way for smart contract development. Apps on Ethereum are expressed in a format called EVM bytecode. Expressing the programs in a standard bytecode format allows program execution to be sandboxed & platform-agnostic. EVM bytecode is also battle-tested & reliable.
It has reached critical mass as the dominant smart contract standard, which is proven by data. EVM (Solidity & Vyper) apps account for 96% of TVL in DeFi according to DefiLlama with >20 supporting chains. It's the safe choice for devs wanting to maximize code portability.
However, the EVM does come with a significant limitation, that all EVM suffer from: Sequential execution.
The EVM can only execute one transaction at a time! This is the simplest implementation, and simple is always a good first approach, but we need to evolve beyond this design (also within the Ethereum ecosystem).
Today, powerful infrastructure and rapid technological advancements fostered by a modular design approach that drives innovation by highly specialized teams finally enables more performant VMs with a much higher throughput than the EVM to be run on L2.
Thanks to the abundance of data (a.k.a. blob) space on a modular DA layer like @CelestiaOrg, it becomes feasible to build customized L2 implementations that run an Alt-VM execution environment, validate state on Ethereum and post data to Celestia, @AvailProject or @eigen_da.
The Alt-VMs that can be run within Ethereum's ecosystem security thanks to these novel network configurations are often much more performant than the EVM, overcoming the above-mentioned limitation of single-threaded execution. Modularity makes parallel VMs on top of Ethereum possible.
But that's not all. Alt-VMs also broaden the spectrum of programming languages and lower barriers of entry for devs. If we want to onboard the next billion users, we first need to onboard the next million devs. More performant and secure programming languages and execution environments that support Web2 languages will make that possible.
Some leading Alt-VM projects that build on L2 are:
✦ @EclipseFND (SVM execution layer with DA on Celestia)
✦ @movementlabsxyz (Parallel MoveVM with DA on Celestia)
✦ @fluentxyz (WASM execution with Web2 language support)
2024 is the year of alt-VMs. 🪬✨
Learn more in the recent modular march script by @modularmedia_ that I had the honor of authoring:
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