Deep Dive: EVM-compatibility
Let’s take a deep dive into the EVM-compatibility landscape:
EVM is the defacto standard among blockchain developers with a huge community for support. This has led other EVM-compatible chains to explore this system and non-EVM chains to buidl EVM-compatibility layers on top of that.
After launching with limited success, the so-called “Ethereum killers” are building solutions on top of the chains to support EVMs. For instance, Polkadot’s Moonbeam, Near’s Aurora, Cosmos’s Evmos & Solana’s Neon.
What is EVM?
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is responsible for defining the rules for calculating a new valid state from block to block. The EVM is a robust sandboxed virtual stack within each Ethereum node, responsible for contract bytecode execution.
Ethereum Developers are leading the web3 development activity with around 4,000+ monthly active developers. It continues to have the largest ecosystem of tools, apps, and protocols and is 2.8x larger than the second-largest ecosystem. One out of five new Web3 developers work on Ethereum.
Solidity & EVM are the de-facto standard for the Blockchains
Ethereum was first to allow on-chain smart contract execution & for this, they published Solidity, an EVM-compatible coding language. Almost every successful dApps uses Solidity & EVM for smart contract execution.
As Ethereum started gaining traction, a lot of different tools appeared to ease & speed up the implementation and deployment of smart contracts over Ethereum (and thus the EVM). You are probably aware of names like Truffle, Ganache, Infura, OpenZeppelin, Hardhat, etc.
Ethereum was the first network to deploy smart contracts & is still the gold standard among competing blockchains. But due to its size & the enormous number of users, scalability has now become an issue.
EVM compatible blockchains
Other permissionless blockchains quickly reacted to the current Ethereum problems by offering lower gas fees & faster transactions. But instead of developing a new way of implementing smart contracts, developers simply copied parts of the Ethereum network.
What do they offer?
For consumers, EVM-compatible chains, offer cheaper gas prices, faster transactions & the same address format as Ethereum leading to a user-friendly environment. It accelerates traffic & ecosystem expansion as Ethereum users can transition to other chains easily.
For Developers, an EVM-compatible chain establishes a code execution environment comparable to the EVM. It implies that Ethereum developers may deploy protocols to the chain quickly & easily without having to create the code from scratch.
There is a huge ecosystem developed around EVM-compatible chains such as Avalanche, Binance, Fantom & Layer 2 solutions such as Arbitrum & Optimism. The comparison of such EVM-based smart contract platforms can be found in the image below.
Moving to Non-EVM chains
Various blockchains stepped in to solve the Ethereum scalability issue which doesn't support EVM & uses different virtual machine standards such as CosmWasm. Popular examples of these chains are Solana, Cosmos, Near Protocol & Polkadot.
Non-EVM enabling EVM on top of it
Initially, chains released without EVM had superior designs, like popular programming language & speed. After including EVM compatibility these chains abandoned their original goal of developing an alternative tech stack to Ethereum's.
Projects built for EVM compatibility on non-EVM chains?
Aurora is a technology that enables Ethereum contracts to be executed in a more performant environment- NEAR blockchain, a contemporary layer-1 blockchain that is fast (2-3 second transaction finalization), scalable & carbon neutral.
Polkadot & Cosmos are multi-chain blockchains that support Moonbeam & Evmos, respectively. They chose not to implement EVM alongside the main VM, but rather to dedicate a single subchain to it.
Moonbeam is the platform that supports EVM compatibility & dApp deployment on Polkadot. With the continuous deployment of projects to Moonbeam, it has become pivotal in bringing utility & interoperability to the network.
Evmos on Cosmos is an application-agnostic chain that will be interoperable with the Ethereum Mainnet, EVM-compatible environments & other BFT chains via IBC, making it easy for users & developers to easily move value between chains.
Neon is a virtual machine that allows developers to use Solana's scalability, liquidity & Ethereum's tools. This means dApp developers get low gas fees, faster transactions, parallel transaction processing, high throughput, and access to the Solana market.
Emerald Paratime on the Oasis Network aims to reduce transaction costs by increasing throughput to over 1000 transactions per second. This EVM supports DApps, including DeFi, NFT, Metaverse, and crypto gaming projects. It also enables cross-chain inter-operability.
Algorand recently announced $20 million in funding to accelerate development in its ecosystem. Foundation officials said $10 million in grants would go to developers that can provide solutions for EVM compatibility.
Read more: https://bit.ly/3AIknuD?
Rollups with EVM compatibility-
zkEVM is a virtual machine that executes smart contracts in a way that is compatible with zero-knowledge-proof computation.
Hermez zkEVM is a highly optimised zk EVM-compatible tech that offers full OPCODE compatibility and Ethereum’s security.
Scroll ZK rollup is an EVM-compatible rollup with a strong network, a robust outsource mechanism that incentivizes rollers to generate ZK proofs, and is compatible with all existing Ethereum infrastructures without any modification.
The EVM environment can serve as an entry point for assets from EVM chains into these underlying chains. Users will select the bridge that is convenient & safe for them. The graphic below depicts Cosmos Hub & Evmos interacting with EVM chains.
EVM is the de facto standard for smart contract execution. It facilitates liquidity movement from the Ethereum chain to these faster, cheaper & scalable EVM solutions. Moreover, with growing developer communities around EVMs, it will resolve most issues with the main Ethereum chain.
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