I. Market Recovery × SIP-3 Release - A New Chapter for Sei Under Dual Benefits


In early May 2025, the cryptocurrency market experienced a long-awaited rebound, undoubtedly injecting a dose of strong confidence into the entire industry. Amid this warm market atmosphere, a relatively young but ambitious Layer-1 public chain project - Sei Network - proposed a clear strategic adjustment: Sei Labs team member and network contributor Philip Su's proposal (SIP-3) calls for Sei to completely abandon its dual-track architecture and go all in on the EVM ecosystem.

For Sei, this is undoubtedly a bold strategic choice. Since its launch, Sei has relied on its high performance and compatibility with multi-chain ecosystems as important differentiators, while supporting the EVM and CosmWasm ecosystems, attempting to find a balance between the two. However, ideals are often full, while reality is fraught with challenges. The complexity brought by the dual-track architecture is a cost that cannot be ignored for developers, users, and infrastructure providers.


II. 'Simplification' - The technical logic and landing effects of EVM-Only

Current Situation and Pain Points: Complexity of Multi-Architecture and Efficiency Bottlenecks

Currently, the Sei network adopts a dual-track parallel architecture, supporting both EVM and CosmWasm smart contracts. Although this design, which accommodates multiple ecosystems, was initially intended to attract a broader range of developers and users, it has also brought about a series of significant challenges and pain points in practice:

More importantly, since the introduction of EVM compatibility with the Sei V2 version, the usage of EVM has shown a rapid growth trend and has gradually dominated network activity, further highlighting the redundancy of the dual-track architecture.


SIP-3 Core Initiative: Architectural Convergence, Focusing on EVM

The core of the SIP-3 proposal lies in boldly simplifying the existing architecture, recommending the complete abandonment of support for CosmWasm contracts and native Cosmos messages; in the future, the Sei network will only handle EVM transactions.


If the SIP-3 proposal passes, the Sei network is expected to gain significant simplification benefits, which will directly benefit all participants in the ecosystem:

  • Developers: Focus solely on Solidity/EVM, drastically reducing learning and integration costs;

  • Infrastructure: Lighter RPC, indexing, and browser operations;

  • Ecosystem Resources: Concentrated efforts on documentation, tools, grants, and auditing services

It is worth noting that in the pure EVM Giga testing environment, Sei achieved 148,917 TPS (over 5 gigagas/sec) and 211 ms final confirmation, a significant increase compared to the previous dual-architecture model's 115,000 TPS and 700 ms, with both throughput and latency greatly improved.


III. 'Confidence' - How Simplification Translates into Market and Community Confidence

Messari Report Endorsement: 'Sei = EVM Tooling + Solana Performance'

A recent research report from the well-known crypto asset research institution Messari provides strong endorsement for Sei's future development direction. Messari's Primer report emphasizes that Sei cleverly combines Ethereum's mature and vast developer toolchain and ecosystem resources, with the high performance and scalability of high-performance Layer-1 networks like Solana. This unique combination makes Sei extremely attractive to developers looking to build applications on high-performance blockchains. Messari believes that by focusing on EVM compatibility, Sei will be able to better leverage the advantages of the Ethereum ecosystem while providing a superior user experience and higher throughput through optimization of its underlying technology.

On-chain data confirms: Ecosystem vitality continues to grow

The on-chain data from the Sei network in the first quarter of 2025 fully confirms the flourishing development of its ecosystem:

  • Significant growth in TVL: According to Messari, the TVL on Sei increased significantly by 73.7% month-on-month, reaching $363.1 million. Although the price of the SEI token has declined, the TVL measured in SEI has surged by 299% to 2.11 billion SEI, indicating that the total assets flowing into the Sei DeFi ecosystem continue to increase. Additionally, the market value of stablecoins on Sei also reached a historic high of $178 million.

  • Daily active addresses and average daily transaction volume steadily increased: DappRadar's data shows that Sei's daily active addresses grew by 78.1% month-on-month, reaching 311,900; the network's average daily transaction volume also increased by 59%, reaching 639,800 transactions. Notably, the average daily transaction volume in the gaming sector surged by 79.8% month-on-month, reaching 354,000 transactions, surpassing all other categories and becoming the main driver of network usage growth.

  • Significant success in the gaming sector: Sei has not only attracted major Web2 gaming projects like World of Dypians but has also seen a number of rapidly emerging native Web3 games. DappRadar's statistics show that Sei has surpassed many blockchains focused on gaming in key metrics like daily active users (DAU), showcasing its strong potential in the gaming field. Sei's game diversity score in the first quarter also reached 8, indicating that 8 different gaming applications contributed to 90% of Sei's gaming-related transaction volume.



IV. The composite value of Simplification × Confidence & Expectation for discussion


Converging the architecture to pure EVM makes Sei's development path very clear - this means lower technical risks and more stable return expectations for investors, and it will also be easier to attract large institutions and partners. Meanwhile, all development documentation, tools, audits, and incentives are focused in the same ecosystem, greatly improving team collaboration efficiency. Coupled with a unified wallet and operation methods, both new and old users will find it easier and more reassuring to use.


It is important to emphasize that the SIP-3 proposal is currently still in the 'Living' review stage, and whether it can ultimately obtain community approval and implementation remains uncertain. Sei's 'EVM Only' strategy is both a pragmatic response to market trends and a practical architectural convergence - most users and developers are already operating on EVM, and migration resistance is limited (over 90% of wallets on Sei already use EVM format, and the community's acceptance and adaptability to pure EVM are very high).

This proposal undoubtedly brings a new dimension of thought to the Layer-1 track: while pursuing compatibility, can extreme focus bring stronger competitiveness? Ultimately, where will Sei's 'EVM Only' path lead? Let's wait and see the wisdom of the community and the choices of the market.