What Are EVM-Compatible Blockchains? Benefits and Examples

Sei

25 Mar 2025 • 8 min read

Meta Description: EVM-compatible blockchains let developers deploy dApps built with the Ethereum ecosystem on non-Ethereum blockchain. Learn more about its benefits.

80% to 90% of crypto developers are Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) developers.

Interestingly, these developers stick with the Ethereum environment and would oppose any proposal to switch to a new execution environment. Some of it is due to technical reasons and risks. However, a more significant part of the reason is that while writing code for a new execution environment, it becomes easier to introduce bugs.

If the developer isn’t largely familiar with the environment, it can risk the whole blockchain project, resulting in draining and shutting down. This is why Jay Jog, Co-Founder of Sei Labs, thinks developers are more inclined to deploy on Ethereum or other EVM-compatible blockchains. There’s an additional ideological angle to it. Ethereum is not just a tech stack, but it’s an ecosystem with tooling and developer mindshare around the EVM, making it sticky.

Let’s understand what EVM compatibility means and what networks can help you ensure it in your upcoming projects.

What Is an EVM?

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is a virtual environment that acts as a global computer for decentralized applications to execute smart contracts across the Ethereum network.

It can execute any algorithm or program written in languages like Solidity. Each operation consumes some gas, preventing misuse or malicious use of resources. After deploying a smart contract, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compiles the contract into a low-level bytecode. The EVM understands this and can effectively execute it while following the rules of the Ethereum protocol.

The execution occurs deterministically, ensuring that smart contracts consistently produce the same output for a given input. This allows developers to ensure that smart contracts are executed precisely as intended, without any external factors interfering or manipulating them. This determinism requires all nodes to agree on the state of the network.

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) provides a secure, isolated environment for executing smart contract code. This sandboxed setup ensures that contract execution remains contained, reducing the risk of malicious code affecting the broader network.

What Does EVM Compatibility Mean?

Being EVM-compatible means a network can execute EVM bytecode, allowing it to run smart contracts compiled from languages like Solidity, Vyper, or Yul. This gives developers the flexibility to deploy their existing Ethereum-based dApps on other EVM-compatible chains without rewriting code.

The blockchain can operate the Ethereum Virtual Machine and execute Ethereum smart contracts. This enables developers to write and deploy the same smart contracts across various EVM-compatible blockchains without making significant alterations to their code. Smart contracts on EVM-compatible blockchains interact with analogous smart contracts via the EVM, allowing developers to create multi-chain dApps.

Here are a few examples of popular EVM-compatible blockchains:

Sei. It’s the first fully parallelized EVM. It offers backward compatibility that lets developers deploy audited smart contracts from EVM-compatible blockchain without changing the code. Among other innovative functionalities, Sei offers optimistic parallelization where developers don’t define any dependencies. We’ll discuss parallelized EVM in more depth soon.
Binance Smart Chain. This L1 chain supports the EVM, letting developers deploy Ethereum-compatible dApps without significant changes.
Avalanche C-Chain. This L1 chain is fully EVM-compatible. It runs Ethereum smart contracts directly, so developers can use Ethereum’s programming languages and tools on a fast and cost-effective platform.
Polygon. This Layer 2 chain acts as a scaling solution for Ethereum. It offers an EVM-compatible environment where smart contracts work seamlessly.
Arbitrum. It’s a Layer 2 rollup that runs on top of Ethereum. It supports the EVM, helping developers easily deploy existing Ethereum contracts.

Layer 1 solutions are not synonymous with EVM-compatible blockchains. However, they can utilize the Ethereum ecosystem to ensure scalability and efficiency. These Layer 2 solutions, such as optimistic rollups or zk-rollups, provide optimized transaction fees and higher throughput by processing transactions off-chain before finalizing the state changes to the Layer 1 chain.

Before we delve deeper into the details of EVM-compatible blockchains, let’s shed more light on the need to objectively understand what propels innovation focused on EVM compatibility.

Exploring The Fundamental Need for EVM-Compatible Blockchains

Although Ethereum is the stepping stone for most tech innovations in blockchain, it is not sufficient to scale the space alone. As a single-threaded chain, Ethereum usually encounters scalability challenges when transaction volumes increase and are received sequentially.

Due to sequential processing, the transactions pile up. The more the pile-up happens, the higher the gas needed to surpass the traffic. This higher gas creates a scalability problem. L2 blockchains came in as a savior. They processed transactions off-chain to reduce gas fees but also processed transactions sequentially. Ultimately, it wasn’t fast enough to scale.

Then, Solana launched a multi-threaded blockchain to address the scalability issue, but it faced challenges related to outages. It was also natively incompatible with EVM. This inspired more innovation in the space and led to the development of parallel-EVM-compatible blockchains. In these chains, transactions took place concurrently, accelerating the EVM.

A Look Into Parallelized, EVM-Compatible Blockchains

Parallel EVMs offer the best of both worlds: scalability in a robust execution environment. Many parallel EVM blockchains exist now, such as Sei, MegaETH, and Monad.

Here’s a brief overview of how these parallel, EVM-compatible blockchains differ from each other:

Sei v2	MegaETH	Monad
Layer 1 EVM-compatible blockchain built on Cosmos SDK	Layer 2 EVM-compatible blockchain that inherits Ethereum’s security	Layer 1 EVM-compatible blockchain built from scratch
Uses optimistic parallelization. It runs transactions at the same time and re-executes any conflicting ones sequentially.	Uses node specialization. Sequencer nodes order and execute transactions concurrently, while prover and full nodes verify them.	Uses optimistic parallel execution with multi-threading. It decouples consensus and execution so both can run simultaneously.
Uses Twin Turbo Consensus, an enhanced version of Tendermint that finalizes transactions in about 380 ms.	Relies on a modular approach. Sequencer nodes produce blocks while decentralized prover and full nodes validate them.	Uses MonadBFT, a custom consensus that secures the order of transactions even with potentially malicious leaders.
Uses SeiDB, which splits storage into two layers (State Commitment and State Store) and includes a Write Ahead Log to recover data.	Uses in-memory computing on sequencer nodes to store the entire EVM state and leverages EigenDA for data availability.	Uses MonadDB, a custom-built database for fast state storage and access.
It offers seamless EVM interoperability and backward compatibility and is optimized for trading and order book efficiency.	Features an Escape Hatch to protect users’ ETH, aims for real-time processing with block times of under 1 ms, and centralizes block production in sequencer nodes.	Decouples consensus from execution (asynchronous execution) to boost performance, targeting 10k TPS and 1-second block times.

From a performance standpoint, Sei offers 28,300 batched transactions per second throughput. It ensures 390 ms block time and 390 ms finality (the time it takes to finalize a transaction), allowing the network to support many users while delivering more interactive experiences than existing blockchains. It also offers far-cheaper transaction costs.

Benefits of EVM-Compatible Blockchains

EVM-compatible blockchain has multiple benefits when it comes to writing smart contracts and building apps.

Interoperability

If you develop a smart contract for one EVM-compatible blockchain, you can easily migrate to other blockchains (also EVM-compatible) with minimum code modifications. Most importantly, no matter which EVM-compatible chain you use to create a smart contract or build a dApp, it can seamlessly interact with Ethereum, expanding possibilities for cross-chain applications.

Most importantly, this interoperability and Ethereum’s EVM attract a vast developer community. This supports the development of dApps across diverse blockchains, supporting a vibrant blockchain ecosystem.

Higher Acceptance From The Developers’ Community

Developers familiar with Ethereum’s programming language, Solidity, experience a less steep learning curve. Solidity creates a standardized environment for them to write smart contracts once and deploy them on any EVM-compatible chain. They don’t have to create separate codebases for each chain.

Most importantly, they reduce friction for developers by allowing them to execute in an environment they feel confident about. This reduces the chances of bugs that might later put the smart contract or the dApp at security risk.

Broader Use Cases

Decentralized applications developed on EVM-compatible chains are inherently based on Ethereum, which facilitates a range of diverse use cases for them. These applications access a wide user base of over 100 million unique wallets.

This creates a mass adoption potential for Web3 applications built on EVM-compatible networks. Below are some common use cases of dApps built on EVM-compatible blockchains.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Lets users lend, borrow, trade, and earn interest on digital assets without a middleman with smart contracts handling transactions automatically.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Artists and creators mint unique digital items on these blockchains. They sell and trade NFTs in online marketplaces, giving creators more control over their work and revenue.
Gaming and virtual worlds. Game developers use EVM chains to create games where players truly own in-game assets. These assets, like characters or items, become tradable tokens that players sell or exchange outside the game.
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Communities form DAOs to manage projects without a central authority. Members vote on decisions, and smart contracts enforce the rules, making governance transparent and fair.
Supply chain management. Businesses track products from creation to delivery on a secure ledger. EVM-compatible blockchains record every transaction, helping companies reduce fraud and improve transparency.

EVM-compatible blockchains create a flexible platform for innovation, empowering developers to build with more confidence for present and future Web3.

Analyzing a Fast and Parallelized EVM-Compatible Blockchain: Sei

Sei, co-founded by Jeff Feng and Jay Jog, was launched to optimize trading. It was built using the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint Core and supported CosmWasm smart contracts. This was Sei v1, a non-EVM blockchain. Jay Jog shared that they were facing friction from developers when transitioning to a new execution environment. They faced this with CosmWasm.

Developers wanted to create in the Ethereum ecosystem for technical and ideological reasons. To facilitate this, Sei came with EVM compatibility. It’s the first parallelized EVM blockchain designed to deliver the best of Solana and Ethereum. The extended support for the Ethereum smart contract.

Below are some components of Sei that make it a go-to choice for EVM-compatible blockchains.

Optimistic parallelization. Transactions run simultaneously here; if conflicts exist, they’re detected and processed one after the other.
Twin Turbo consensus. It’s based on Cosmos Tendermint consensus. Earlier Sei v1 had a finality time of 6 seconds. The new, improved consensus reduced this time to less than 400 ms, around 360 ms. Compared with Ethereum’s finality time of 13 seconds, Sei became around 2000x faster. The Twin Turbo consensus made two optimizations to Tendermint: intelligent block propagation and optimistic block processing.
Interoperable EVM and Backward Compatibility. Allowed EVM developers on Ethereum or other EVM chains to re-deploy on Sei without altering smart contracts or dApps.
Sei DB. Unlike other blockchain storage, the Sei database is split into State Commitment and State Store. The former focuses on adding each block after consensus and validation, while the latter maintains historical data and allows access.

Learn more about optimization made in Sei to make it a highly interoperable and fast blockchain to deploy EVM smart contracts.

Deploy on Sei For Scalability and Speed

Sei expedited the slowest part of a blockchain transaction’s lifecycle, from time to finality. It reduced the time for a globally distributed set of validators to reach consensus, to get a time to finality of less than 400ms.

Take a look at some of the featured application on Sei.

This unlocks true scalability for dApps and smart contracts deployed on Sei. Start building on Sei using its documentation and be a part of the ecosystem.

Welcome to Sei.