Dialogue with Monad, Sei and Eclipse founders: Exploring the future of high-throughput blockchain together

Collated and compiled by TechFlow

Guests:Keone Hon, Co-founder CEO of Monad Labs; Jay Jog, Co-founder of Sei Labs; Vijay Chetty, CEO of Eclipse Labs

Host:Laura Shin, author and host of Unchained

Podcast source:Unchained

Original title:How to Build the Fastest Onchain Experience With Monad, Sei, and Eclipse

Broadcast date:August 28, 2024

Key points

In this episode, Monad Labs’ Keone Hon, Jay Jog of Sei Labs, and Vijay Chetty of Eclipse Labs share their different approaches to scalability and performance on high-throughput blockchains. They discuss the technical advantages of parallelizing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the strategic decisions behind blockchain architecture, and the innovations that drive the next generation of high-speed chains.

Monad

How Monad started, and the original mission

Keone discusses the origins and mission of Monad. Monad is an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchain that uses a design called a pipeline architecture, which is capable of a high throughput of 10,000 transactions per second and a block generation time of one second. The creation of Monad began in early 2022 by three co-founders, Eunice Girda, James Hon Saker, and Keone. Keone and James worked at Jump Trading for about eight years, focusing on building high-performance trading systems, and participated in Solana DeFi related work in Jump's crypto team.

They realized that there was an urgent need for higher performance EVM execution in the market, so they decided to leave Jump and start Monad with Eunice Girda.

Keone pointed out that the core goal of Monad is to get the maximum performance from minimalist hardware, which requires building new software from scratch and introducing new architectural improvements. The design concept of Monad is to stack four major improvements on top of each other, each of which has a multiplier effect on the overall efficiency of the system, thereby achieving excellent performance.

Features that make Monad a high-throughput blockchain

Keone detailed several key features of Monad that achieve high throughput.

First, Monad uses a customized state database that can store Ethereum Merkle tree data natively on SSDs, allowing for more efficient state access.

The second improvement is optimistic parallel execution, which allows multiple transactions to run in parallel while ensuring that the final result is consistent with the result of serial execution.

The third item is asynchronous execution, which creates independent "swim lanes" between consensus and execution, allowing execution to make full use of the entire block time, not just a small part of it.

Finally, Monad BFT is a performance consensus mechanism that is able to maintain synchronization between hundreds of globally distributed nodes.

In response to the composability problem of parallel processing, Keone explained that Monad's blocks are still linear, and the transactions within the block are also defined in a linear manner, so the total order is maintained between transactions. Parallel processing is performed in the background and does not affect the final result of transaction execution. The guarantee of this optimistic parallel execution is that although some processing is performed in parallel, the final submission is still carried out in the original transaction order, ensuring that each submission is correct and can be re-executed if any input changes.

In addition, Keone also mentioned that the customized state database is designed to solve the problem of blockchain expansion. As the state continues to grow, the cost and latency of accessing the state will also increase. The database structure used by existing Ethereum clients is complex, resulting in a lot of interactions when accessing a state in the Merkle tree. Monad's custom database (called Mona DB) is specifically optimized for the problem of storing Ethereum Merkle tree data. Although building a database from scratch is a complex process, it is an important step to improve execution efficiency.

Why Monad chose to create a new blockchain instead of L2

Keone explained why Monad chose to be a standalone blockchain instead of L2.

First, decentralization is their primary consideration. They believe that decentralized block production and nodes participating in consensus are very important, which is essential for censorship resistance and decentralization of overall network control. Most existing L2 solutions still rely on centralized sorters, which is contrary to their decentralized philosophy.

Second, performance and cost are also key factors. In order to build a truly high-performance system, every layer of the technology stack must be optimized, including execution components, consensus components (keeping synchronization between nodes), and other considerations such as data availability. Keone emphasized that Monad's goal is to comprehensively solve these problems and build an efficient single system to achieve maximum performance.

Why Keone believes that Monad provides the best experience for developers, and why he doesn't like the title of "Ethereum Killer"

Keone mentioned that the reason why Monad provides the best experience for developers is mainly reflected in two aspects: performance and compatibility. First, Monad is fully EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible, which means that developers can continue to use the tools and libraries they are familiar with, such as the Solidity programming language. This compatibility enables developers to reuse existing components or ensure backward compatibility with Ethereum standards when building new applications.

Second, Monad provides significant performance improvements. Through asynchronous execution and efficient consensus mechanisms, developers can deploy applications in the Monad environment to enjoy higher transaction processing capabilities. This is especially important for applications that hope to achieve mainstream adoption because they need to process a large number of transactions.

Views on the title of "Ethereum Killer"

Keone expressed a different view. He believes that this description is not accurate because the Monad project focuses on some under-researched directions in the field of Ethereum expansion. Keone emphasized that the team hopes to enhance Ethereum's capabilities by exploring different technical pillars, rather than replacing it. Their goal is to contribute to Ethereum's expansion roadmap by proposing improvement proposals (EIPs) and collaborating with other researchers.

Keone further pointed out that Monad can be seen as a pioneer environment for certain Ethereum improvements, which may drive some improvements into Ethereum or other environments over time. Therefore, the goal of Monad is to enhance Ethereum's capabilities rather than destroy it.

Monad's Large VC Financing and How It Uses the Funds

Monad recently completed its largest financing event in 2024, raising a total of $225 million. Keone said that the funds will be used in many aspects, with the main goal of expanding the team and recruiting more talents who can drive the Monad project and the entire industry forward. They not only hope to recruit professionals in the crypto field, but also plan to attract some junior engineers with rich experience in other fields and introduce them to the crypto industry.

Keone emphasized that the team is grateful for the support of investors and believes that this funding provides them with sufficient resources to realize their vision.

Keone also mentioned that although Monad has not yet been officially launched, it has attracted the attention of many venture investors and applications. For example, Monad applications such as Kintsu and Kuru have recently received financing. This attention reflects the capabilities of the team in the Monad ecosystem and investors' expectations for features such as high throughput, low fees, and full EVM compatibility. In addition, investors are also confident in the other improvements that the Monad team continues to promote, which will help expand and enhance the capabilities of the EVM in the long term.

Monad's Strong Community

Keone pointed out that Monad has a strong community, mainly due to the active contributions of community members and the efforts within the team. He believes that the growth of the community is ultimately driven by members who feel they can contribute. The role of the Monad team is to create a friendly environment where people feel welcome, while managing spam and creating a good atmosphere.

Keone expressed his gratitude to the actively involved individuals in the community who set high standards, created wonderful memes and artwork, and organized various events. For example, Monad has also established the Monad Running Club, a Strava group where members record their runs with the aim of improving health. In addition, there is the Mon Lingo program, which aims to learn new languages together.

These community events showcase the fun of the Monad community, emphasizing the building of friendships and relationships rather than just focusing on financial gains or "farming" behavior. This kind of social network building is critical to a successful blockchain community.

What's next for Monad and whether it will launch a token soon

Keone said that Monad's testnet and mainnet are about to be launched, and the team is working hard. Although there is no exact release date, it is progressing very smoothly.

Regarding the Monad token, Keone was unable to provide specific information at this time, despite the leak of the token name and subsequent withdrawal. He said that he could not comment on this for the time being.

Sei

What is Sei, and the role of the GameStop incident in its creation

Sei is a fully functional first-level blockchain that was originally inspired by the GameStop incident that Jay Jog and his co-founder Jeff Feng experienced in 2021. Jay was the head of engineering at Robinhood at the time, and he experienced the internal chaos of the incident firsthand. When buying of GameStop and other stocks was suspended, Robinhood faced tremendous public pressure, which made him very uncomfortable because as an insider, they did not have full background information and had to bear reputational risks.

After experiencing the GameStop incident, Jay and Jeff decided to create a decentralized trading platform designed to avoid similar situations. Initially, they wanted to build an on-chain decentralized exchange (DEX), but found that there was no suitable ecosystem to support an on-chain order book-based exchange at the time. Therefore, they decided to build it as a standalone chain, which eventually evolved into Sei, a blockchain platform focused on efficient trading and decentralized finance.

Why Jay thinks the EVM developer ecosystem is so strong

Jay believes that the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) developer ecosystem is strong for the following reasons:

1. High proportion of developers:Currently, about 80% to 90% of developers in the crypto space are EVM developers. This means that the EVM ecosystem has a huge developer base.

2. Technical and ideological stickiness:EVM is not just a technology stack, but also an ecosystem. A rich tool and developer culture has been formed around EVM, giving developers a stronger sense of belonging and stickiness in this environment. Many developers are opposed to moving to other execution environments, partly because of technical complexity, and moving to a new environment may lead to errors in the code, which will affect the security of the entire project.

3. Performance limitations:Jay pointed out that the biggest limitation of EVM is insufficient throughput, which leads to poor user experience. For example, Ethereum's transaction processing capacity is low, and users need to pay high transaction fees during peak hours, which makes it difficult for ordinary users to operate on the chain.

4. Potential for parallel processing:Jay mentioned that EVM currently processes transactions in a single thread, while modern computers are multi-core and can handle multiple workflows simultaneously. Their core insight is that by parallelizing the EVM, modern hardware can be more efficiently utilized, thereby improving transaction processing capabilities. This is also why they chose to build Sei, making it the first parallelized EVM.

5. Combining advantages:By combining the advantages of EVM with the characteristics of high-performance blockchains such as Solana, Sei is able to provide higher performance and user experience while maintaining the EVM developer ecosystem.

Why Sei switched from Cosmos to EVM, leading to the launch of its v2

Jay explained the process of Sei's switch from the original Cosmos to EVM and the reasons for launching V2, mainly including the following points:

· Initial choice:In the initial stage of Sei, the team chose to use Cosmos SDK to build application-specific chains because Cosmos SDK is a well-tested framework that makes it easier to start projects. This allowed them to quickly build infrastructure.

· Transition to a general chain:As the project developed, the Sei team realized that they needed a more general solution, and Cosmos SDK was still a good starting point. However, they found some inefficiencies during use, so they made several optimizations.

· Optimization of consensus mechanism:Initially, Sei used the more basic Tendermint consensus mechanism. In order to improve performance, they optimized the block propagation and processing methods, and finally developed the "twin turbo consensus", making Sei one of the fastest blockchains currently.

· Performance advantage:Through these improvements, Sei achieved a final confirmation time of 400 milliseconds, which is faster than the confirmation time of other chains such as Solana. This high performance makes Sei stand out from the competition.

· Decision to switch to EVM:With a deeper understanding of market demand and the developer ecosystem, Sei decided to launch V2 and switch to the EVM environment. This shift will not only attract a large number of EVM developers, but also take advantage of the rich tools and resources in the EVM ecosystem to improve user experience and development efficiency.

What makes Sei "the fastest chain, even faster than Solana"

Jay explained how Sei became the "fastest chain" and introduced the characteristics of twin turbo consensus in detail, mainly including the following points:

· The mechanism of twin turbo consensus:

In the traditional Tendermint consensus mechanism, processing a block requires two rounds of voting: pre-vote and pre-commit, and then the block processing begins. This process is time-consuming.

Sei's innovation is that while these two rounds of voting are in progress, blocks are processed in parallel. This means that during the voting period, the processing of blocks can be carried out simultaneously, saving time. For example, if the voting process takes 300 milliseconds, Sei can use this time to process blocks, thereby improving overall performance.

· Optimization of block propagation:

In traditional Tendermint, when a block is submitted, the entire block must be sent over the network, even if most of the transactions are already in each validator's memory pool.

Sei's solution is to send only the transaction hash (each hash is about 32 bytes) instead of the entire transaction. This greatly reduces the amount of data transmitted over the network, allowing validators to reconstruct blocks locally, thereby improving performance.

· Introduction of parallelization:

In addition to the dual-turbo consensus, Sei also introduces parallelization technology to further improve the performance of the execution layer. This parallel processing capability allows Sei to use computing resources more efficiently.

· Market Feedback and Transformation:

When Sei launched V1, it only supported Cosmos and Rust smart contracts, which led to developers being reluctant to learn new programming languages and a relatively small number of people using them.

In communication with developers, Sei received consistent feedback that they wanted to support EVM. Therefore, the team decided to switch to EVM and make further optimizations and improvements on this basis.

· Successful launch of V2:

Sei announced V2 in November last year and officially launched in May this year. V2 combines EVM and Cosmos smart contracts, allowing developers to use different smart contract languages on the same chain.

With the launch of V2, Sei's ecosystem has grown rapidly, attracting a large number of new projects and investors, and TVL (total locked value) has grown significantly.

How Sei DB works and why Jay believes that monolithic architecture has many advantages over modular architecture

How Sei DB works

· State storage and data writing:

With transaction parallelization and higher throughput, the amount of data written on the Sei blockchain has increased significantly, which has led to the problem of state load. State load is one of the main reasons for the decline in blockchain performance.

To solve this problem, Sei introduced CDB, a new database solution, with two main ideas at its core:

1. Memory-mapped IVL tree: In V1, the entire tree structure was stored on disk, while in V2, Sei split it into multiple files and removed a lot of metadata, resulting in a reduction of about 60% of stored data. This makes it easier to run a full node and can scale more quickly.

2. Asynchronous writes to disk: The state is created in memory instead of being written to disk immediately, which increases the write speed. Jay mentioned that the write speed increased by 287 times when submitting blocks. This improvement significantly improves performance, reduces latency and increases throughput.

Advantages of Monolithic Architecture

· Complexity Management:

Jay believes that monolithic architecture has obvious advantages in managing complexity compared to modular architecture. In a modular architecture, the dependencies between multiple microservices increase the complexity of the system. For example, the separation of the execution layer, settlement layer, and data availability layer may cause communication problems between them, increasing the fragility of the system.

· Performance Optimization:

In a monolithic architecture, all components run within the same system, eliminating communication delays between different modules, thereby improving overall performance. Jay emphasized that top performance is always better in a monolithic chain than in a modular system because modular architectures need to handle additional communication overhead.

· Fault tolerance:

Failures in individual parts of a modular architecture may affect the finality and availability of the entire system. In a monolithic architecture, all functions are concentrated in one system, reducing the scope of impact when a failure occurs.

Jay emphasized that although modular architectures may be more appropriate in some cases (such as requiring dedicated block space), monolithic architectures provide a better solution for applications that pursue top performance. Sei DB is designed to support high performance requirements by optimizing state storage and increasing write speeds while reducing system complexity.

Eclipse

How Eclipse works by combining Ethereum, Solana and Cosmos

Eclipse's vision and goals

· High-throughput L2 solution:Eclipse aims to build a high-throughput Ethereum layer 2 (L2) solution that aims to improve efficiency by optimizing the execution environment. Vijay emphasized that Eclipse chose to use the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) because it provides higher parallel processing capabilities and throughput than the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

Modular Architecture

· Modular Design:Eclipse adopts a modular design approach, leveraging different blockchain technologies to meet different needs:

· Execution Layer:Eclipse uses the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) because it provides higher throughput and has a large Rust developer community. This enables Web 2 developers to easily transition to Web 3 and build applications using the high performance of SVM.

· Settlement and Consensus Layer:Eclipse chose Ethereum as the settlement and consensus layer to leverage Ethereum’s large user base and diverse assets. This combination enables users to enjoy the superior user experience of Solana applications while still being able to access Ethereum’s assets and ecosystem.

· Data Availability Layer:Eclipse chose Celestia as the data availability solution because it is a leader in modular data availability and provides the best block data publishing costs.

ZK Fraud Proofs

· Fraud Proof Layer:Eclipse plans to use zero-knowledge (ZK) fraud proofs to create a trust-minimized L2 solution. Vijay believes that all optimistic approaches will eventually move to ZK fraud proofs, so Eclipse hopes to be at the forefront in this area.

Solving Industry Problems

· Solving the Fragmentation Problem:Vijay mentioned that there is a fragmentation problem in the current Ethereum ecosystem, which makes coordination between different RFQs and liquidity providers complicated. Eclipse aims to provide a general L2 solution that can support the needs of most applications, thereby reducing the coordination problems caused by this fragmentation.

How Eclipse handles the complexity of its modular architecture

Internal development and testing

· Team efforts:The Eclipse team conducted a lot of internal development and testing to ensure efficient communication between the various layers. The close cooperation with Celestia has significantly improved the efficiency of data release.

Optimization of data release

· Data volume and metadata:Vijay mentioned that Eclipse recently set a record for the largest amount of data released in a single day, and the reason behind this achievement was the optimization of data structure. He pointed out that in addition to the transaction list, a large amount of other metadata is included in the compressed Solana block. Therefore, reducing the amount of metadata and improving the efficiency of data release have become important optimization directions.

Continuous Learning and Optimization

· Dynamic Adjustment:The Eclipse team is constantly learning and adjusting to cope with the growing volume of activity. The goal is to reduce the ratio of published data to activity as activity increases, thereby improving overall efficiency.

Ecosystem Collaboration

· Collective Testing and Collaboration:Vijay stressed that “collective battle testing” between Eclipse and Celestia and other ecosystem partners is an important part of the optimization process. This collaboration not only helps improve its own solutions, but also promotes the progress of the entire ecosystem.

Where are the ways to trade in SOL on Eclipse

Bridge Mechanism

· Bridge Required:Trading SOL on Eclipse requires the use of a bridge mechanism. Eclipse will operate a dedicated bridge for transferring Ether (ETH) to Eclipse.

Asset Bridging Collaboration

· Partners:Eclipse is also working with other bridge service providers, such as Hyperlane, to facilitate bridging from other L1 and L2 assets. This means that users can more conveniently transfer various assets to the Eclipse platform.

Wrapped SOL Tokens

· Wrapped SOL:On Eclipse, SOL will exist in the form of wrapped tokens. This means that during the bridging process, users will convert the original SOL into a wrapped version to trade on the Eclipse network.

Vijay's reaction to how Eclipse Labs responded to the allegations made by its founder and former CEO Neel Somani

1. Focus on products and teams: Vijay emphasized that his main focus is on the future of the company, its products and its development roadmap. He is committed to ensuring that the team is working in a unified direction, and 99% of his energy is focused on building products and teams.

2. No personal behavior: Vijay said that he would not comment on Neel Somani's personal behavior or allegations because he believed that the authenticity of these allegations was not for him to judge. However, he supported those who spoke out and their right to express themselves.

3. Company and product priority: Vijay emphasized that the most important thing for him is to focus on the company and the products being built. He believes that the controversy surrounding Neel is mainly a personal matter, Neel has left the company, and the team will continue to focus on their work.

How Eclipse Attracts Developers

Attracting Solana Developers

Easy Application Porting: Eclipse provides an easy way for existing Solana developers to migrate their applications to Ethereum to reach Ethereum users and assets. This is a growth opportunity for protocols like Mango, Soul Land, etc. to attract more users and assets while bringing the Solana application experience to their users.

Attracting Ethereum Developers

Opportunities for cross-chain development: Vijay pointed out that there has been less communication between Ethereum and Solana developers, mainly due to the differences between the two languages (such as Solidity and Rust). However, this situation has improved recently, and developers have begun to explore how to use Rust on Ethereum, and tools such as Rep are also supporting this cross-chain development.

Solving Ethereum's scalability issues

Decentralized trading experience: Many Ethereum developers move their DeFi trading processes off-chain or to specific application chains due to scalability limitations. Vijay believes that this has led to a fragmented experience, making it difficult to achieve liquidity unification and transparency. Eclipse provides a solution that enables developers to deploy institutional-grade central limit order books (CLOBs) and seamless request for quotes (RFQ) systems while keeping these operations completely on-chain.

Providing high-quality DeFi application experience

Institutional-grade DeFi applications: Eclipse aims to provide users with a high-quality DeFi application experience while maintaining full on-chain operations, which is contrary to the current trend of many developers moving intent and RFQ systems off-chain. In this way, Eclipse can help developers achieve better user experience and greater transparency.

Which areas does Vijay expect to flourish on Eclipse?

DeFi

Institutional DeFi Experiences: Vijay is excited to see some institutional DeFi experiences during the hackathon, especially the Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) and Request for Quote (RFQ) systems. He stressed that these systems need to have a good user experience so that they can be easily accessed by ordinary users.

Meme Coin Space

Fair Launch and Community Ownership: Vijay noted that there has been a lot of activity on Meme Coin on Solana, and he is looking forward to seeing some innovation related to fair launch and community ownership. These concepts can be applied to venture-backed crypto companies to promote community participation and development.

Consumer Experience

High-throughput consumer applications: Vijay emphasized that the high throughput provided by Eclipse provides a huge opportunity to build a first-class consumer experience. He mentioned that mainstream Web 2 social applications have a large number of transactions and interactions per second, so being able to use Eclipse's capabilities to support these applications is a very interesting design space. He mentioned some successful examples such as Friend Tech, Forecaster and Lens, which have demonstrated potential in this area.

Infrastructure

Decentralized physical infrastructure: In terms of infrastructure, Vijay mentioned the potential of decentralized sensor networks and decentralized artificial intelligence. He believes that although there is some hype in this field, there are still many interesting possibilities in the design space of large-scale sensors and deep networks.

What's next for Eclipse and when the mainnet may be launched

Vijay mentioned that Eclipse has launched the mainnet for developers, but there is no active promotion of front-end tooling for ordinary users. Their focus is to help developers and infrastructure partners deploy applications to the mainnet environment.

The public mainnet launch is expected to be around September, when a variety of interfaces and gamification experiences will be launched for ordinary users.

Post-launch development plan

· Withdrawal function: Before the public mainnet is launched, users will be allowed to withdraw, which is a basic requirement.

· Phased development: After the mainnet launch, Eclipse will transition to the first phase of Rollup in the next few months, which will include the launch of permissionless fraud proofs, trust-minimized bridges, and mandatory inclusion.

· Gradual open source: Eclipse plans to gradually open source part of its technology stack in the future. The currently launched parts adopt the Apache 2.0 license, allowing academic use and reuse.

Decentralization and governance

Decentralized future: Vijay emphasized that decentralization and governance are part of the Eclipse roadmap, and the Eclipse Foundation is working on a timeline.

Competitiveness and innovation

· High throughput opportunities: Eclipse aims to provide significantly higher throughput and plans to take the lead in implementing the independent validator client developed by the Jump team for Solana.

· Hardware acceleration: Vijay said that Eclipse will also conduct research on hardware acceleration, with the goal of achieving a throughput of hundreds of thousands of transactions per second to support the scale of Web 2 and Web 3 applications.

Suitable application types

Key application areas: Vijay specifically mentioned that the most suitable application types for Eclipse include on-chain central limit order books and RFQ systems, mainstream consumer applications that can cover millions of users, and deep applications such as large sensor networks.

Summary

In general:

· Monad focuses on optimizing EVM performance to provide an efficient Ethereum experience.

· Sei improves DeFi transaction efficiency through a decentralized trading platform combined with parallelized EVM.

· Eclipse combines multiple blockchain technologies to provide high-throughput Ethereum L2 solutions through modular architecture and ZK fraud proofs.

These three projects have each proposed innovative solutions to different challenges of blockchain performance and decentralized applications, promoting the diversified development of blockchain technology.

Original link