Sei’s Parallel Stack

Enabling Maximally Performant L2 Blockchains

Parallelizing the EVM does not stop with launching Sei v2. It’s time to think even bigger. 

As part of Sei’s mission to scale the EVM, creating an open sourced framework for maximally performant, parallelized L2 chains is a natural next step. Introducing: the Parallel Stack.

Motivation

Sei Labs has and always will operate with a “developer-forward” approach. With this in mind, it’s critical to acknowledge the dominance and popularity of the EVM amongst the majority of developers in the space. Almost 9/10 of blockchain developers contribute to at least one EVM chain. Despite this, through extensive feedback, Sei Labs is acutely aware of the limitations these developers currently face including constraints on throughput and a restricted design space that stifles creativity and innovation.

This is true across both Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions leveraging the EVM. While Sei has pushed the boundaries of atomically composable Layer 1 EVM blockchains, many developers agree with Vitalik's rollup-centric roadmap for scaling the Ethereum ecosystem, and have opted for a “Layer 2” approach.

While Layer 2 chains are indeed cheaper to use than Ethereum mainnet, and about to get even cheaper with EIP-4844, Sei Labs sees that there are still numerous improvements that can be made to enhance their performance.

Rather than a zero sum approach, Sei Labs believes in harnessing collective expertise and resources to push the boundaries of what blockchain applications can achieve, ensuring that the ecosystem grows not just in size but in capability and sophistication. 

Introducing The Parallel Stack

Today, essentially all EVM blockchains are single threaded. That includes both Layer 1 and Layer 2 scaling solutions for Ethereum. However,  Sei Labs anticipates a unanimous  preference among developers for parallelized over single-threaded virtual machines. The promise of significantly higher performance and scalability offered by parallel processing aligns with the developers' needs and aspirations for not just lower fees, but more expansive design spaces for applications.

Sei Labs is proud to unveil its groundbreaking initiative, The Parallel Stack, setting a new benchmark for maximally performant Layer 2 solutions and rollups. Sei’s goal is to scale the EVM, and The Parallel Stack is a natural next step in line with that goal.

At its core, The Parallel Stack emerges as a robust, open-source framework designed for crafting Layer 2s and rollups that harness the power of parallel processing. Inspired by the developments and learnings from building the most performant EVM blockchain to date in Sei v2, this architectural innovation is tailored to significantly enhance the Ethereum ecosystem, targeting the performance bottlenecks that Layer 2 blockchains currently face.

This is primarily achieved by capitalizing on advances in modern hardware, with a clear opportunity to drastically reduce transaction fees and elevate the user experience across all Layer 2 rollups and applications developed with this new framework. As a fully open-sourced public good, the parallel stack offers a rich foundation for builders around Ethereum, empowering them with unparalleled customization capabilities while anchoring on the robust security features of Ethereum or any chosen data availability layer. Furthermore, as part of the default Parallel Stack configuration, projects can choose to leverage Sei’s validator set to provide sequencing for their Parallel chain. 

The philosophy behind The Parallel Stack resonates with the principle of serving as a public good for the Ethereum ecosystem. By offering this technology freely and with an open-source ethos, Sei Labs demonstrates a commitment to fostering innovation and collaboration within the blockchain community. 

The Vision for Sei

Sei Labs mission continues to be to build the best infrastructure for exchanges, to enable teams to develop the highest performance blockchain applications, thereby accelerating the evolution of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). By creating an open-source framework for maximally performant blockchains, Sei Labs aims to facilitate a leap in performance capabilities across the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

The Parallel Stack is a vision for the future where every Ethereum Layer 2 leverages parallel processing for enhanced efficiency, leading to improved user experience and enlarged design space for developers. Sei Labs anticipates that the Parallel stack becomes the de facto standard for launching new Layer 2 solutions, marking a significant milestone in the evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem.