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The "Ethereum Killer" Defection: An interpretation of EVM ecology

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The so-called "Ethereum killers" are building on-chain solutions to further support ethereum virtual machines.

Original title: "An In-depth understanding of EVM's Ecological Empire"

GravityX Capital

Captain Hiro, the Way of DeFi

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the de facto standard among blockchain developers, and there is a huge community behind it. This led other Ethereum VM-compatible blockchains to explore the system, and non-Ethereum VM-compatible blockchains to build ethereum VM-compatible layers on top of it.

Let's take a closer look at the compatibility of Ethereum virtual machines.

After the limited success of the launch, the so-called "Ethereum killers" are building on-chain solutions to further support ethereum virtual machines. Examples include Moonbeam from Boca, Aurora from NEAR Protocol, Evmos from Cosmo, and Neon from Solana.

What is EVM?

The Ethereum VIRTUAL machine is responsible for defining the rules for calculating new valid states from block to block. The Ethereum virtual machine is a powerful sandbox virtual stack within each Ethereum node that is responsible for the execution of contract bytecode.

Currently, Ethereum developers are leading Web3 development activities, with approximately 4,000 + active developers per month. Ethereum continues to have the largest ecosystem of tools, applications, and protocols, 2.8 times larger than the next largest. One out of every five new Web3 developers is building on ethereum.

Solidity and ethereum virtual machines are the de facto standards for blockchains.

Ethereum was the first blockchain to allow the execution of on-chain smart contracts, and to that end they released Solidity, a coding language compatible with Ethereum virtual machines. Almost all successful decentralized applications (Dapps) use Solidity and Ethereum virtual machines to execute smart contracts.

As Ethereum begins to gain more usage and attention, a number of different tools have emerged on the web to ease and speed up the execution and deployment of smart contracts on Ethereum (and ethereum virtual machines). You probably know protocols like Truffle, Ganache, Infura, OpenZeppelin, Hardhat, etc.

In addition, Ethereum was the first network to deploy smart contracts, and it remains the gold standard in the competitive chain. But because of its size and huge number of users, Ethereum's scalability is now an issue that cannot be ignored.

EVM entry is compatible with chain

Other unlicensed blockchains have quickly responded to the current problems on Ethereum by offering lower gas fees and faster transactions. But instead of developing new ways to implement smart contracts, these blockchain developers simply copied parts of the Ethereum network.

What do these competing chains of Ethereum offer?

For consumers, chains compatible with Ethereum virtual machines offer cheaper gas prices, faster transactions and the same address format as Ethereum, which provides a user-friendly environment. It speeds up traffic and ecosystem expansion, as Ethereum users can easily transition to other chains.

For developers, the Ethereum VM-compatible chain establishes an Ethereum VM-equivalent code execution environment. This means ethereum developers can quickly and easily deploy protocols to other competing chains without having to create code from scratch.

Currently, a huge ecosystem has developed around the Ethereum VIRTUAL machine compatibility chain, such as Avalance, Binance Smart Chain, Fantom, and second tier solutions such as Arbitrum and Optimism. You can see the comparison of smart contract platforms based on Ethereum virtual machines below:

Non EVM compatible chain

Various blockchains step in to address the scalability issues of Ethereum, which does not support Ethereum virtual machines and uses different virtual machine standards, such as CosmWasm. Popular examples of these blockchains are Solana, Cosmos, Near Protocol, and Boka.

Non-evm blockchains enable EVM

Initially, those blockchains released without compatible Ethereum virtual machines had superior design, such as popular programming languages and speed. By including the compatibility of Ethereum virtual machines, these blockchains abandoned their original goal of developing an alternative technology stack to Ethereum.

Projects to establish EVM compatibility on non-EVM chains

- Aurora on the NEAR Protocol

- Moonbeam on Boca

- Evmos on Cosmos

- Neon on Solana

- Oasis Emerald Paratime on Oasis Swao

- Algorand published plans

Aurora is a technology that enables ethereum contracts to be executed in a higher performance environment, on the NEAR blockchain, a contemporary tier 1 blockchain that is fast (2-3 seconds to complete a transaction), scalable, and environmentally friendly.

Boca and Cosmos are multi-chain blockchains that support Moonbeam and Evmos, respectively. They chose not to implement the Ethereum virtual machine with the master virtual machine, instead providing it with a dedicated sub-chain.

Moonbeam is a platform that supports Ethereum VIRTUAL machine compatibility and deployable decentralized applications on Boca. As the project continues to be deployed to Moonbeam, it has become key to bringing utility and interoperability to the network.

Evmos on Cosmos is an application-independent chain that will interoperate with the Ethereum main network, Ethereum VIRTUAL Machine compatible environments, and other BFT (Byzantine fault-tolerant) chains via IBC (Inter-blockchain communication), enabling users and developers to easily transfer value between chains.

Neon is a virtual machine that allows developers to use Solana's scalability, liquidity and Ethereum tools. This means that decentralized application developers can get lower gas charges, 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 more than 1,000 transactions per second. The Ethereum VIRTUAL machine supports decentralized applications, including DeFi (Decentralized Finance), NFT, metaverse and cryptocurrency game projects. In addition, it enables cross-chain interoperability.

Algorand recently announced $20 million in funding to accelerate the development of its ecosystem. Its foundation officials said the $10 million grant will go to developers who can provide a solution for ethereum virtual machine compatibility.

Rollup with EVM compatibility

ZkEVM is a virtual machine that can execute smart contracts in a manner compatible with zero proof of knowledge computing.

Hermez zkEVM is an optimized zkEVM compatibility technology that provides full OPCODE compatibility and Ethereum security.

Scroll ZK Rollup is a Rollup compatible with Ethereum virtual machines that has a powerful network, a powerful outsourcing mechanism, incentives for users (rollers) to produce zero knowledge proofs, and is compatible with all existing Ethereum infrastructure without any modifications.

The ethereum VIRTUAL machine's environment can act as an entry point for assets from the Ethereum virtual machine chain into these base chains. Users will choose the bridge that is convenient and safe for them. The graphics below describe how Cosmos Hub and Evmos interact with the Ethereum virtual machine chain.

Ethereum virtual machines are the de facto standard for smart contract enforcement. It facilitates the transfer of liquidity from the Ethereum blockchain to these faster, cheaper and scalable Ethereum VIRTUAL machine solutions. In addition, as the developer community around the Ethereum VIRTUAL machine grows, it will solve most of the problems of the Ethereum main chain.