As an EVM builder, I've started to notice something uncomfortable - the new wave of devs on these faster blockchains like Solana, MegaETH, Monad, Sonic amongst others are already operating in a different paradigm - streaming-first, low-latency and built for real-time UX.

Meanwhile, many of us in the Ethereum world are still stuck thinking in blocks and polling intervals. We're trying to graft speed onto systems that were never designed for it, and it shows.

As chains like @base move to a sub-second blocktime, EVM devs will need to level up or be left behind.

Here are four examples that hit home for me:

1️⃣ Wallet price feeds

If there's a swap every block, then prices change every block. A polling strategy just doesn't work to reflect the latest prices.

2️⃣ Onchain gaming

Ethereum games are mostly off-chain simulations with onchain settlement. Newer games will stream onchain events (like user moves, enemy actions, or loot drops) with no perceptible lag. EVM games today are mostly turn-based games.

3️⃣ AI Agents

While building out our AI Agent SDK, we wanted to build an AI trading copilot that ingests live market data every 400ms, detects patterns like spoofing or whale activity, streams real-time insights directly into the UI - suggesting pre-filled orders or adjusting to risk. Let's just say that this was hard to build when the data is delayed, batched and had to be polled out of RPCs and indexers.

4️⃣ Composable data streams

The data infrastructure of the future will be streaming state changes across protocols - like syncing interest rate changes directly into yield aggregators. In the EVM world, we stitch APIs together and pray for consistency.

This isn't just theoretical, this is a problem today with apps on testnets for Monad and MegaETH. We see these issues first-hand speaking to devs working with @Covalent_HQ.

We are building a solution - stay tuned! 👀