Breakthrough Advances in Parallel EVM: Technical Comparison of Monad, MegaETH, and Pharos

Recently, three important parallel EVM projects have launched their testnets one after another. Monad launched its test network on February 19, MegaETH on March 21, and Pharos on March 24. This marks a return of Web3 technology to the parallel EVM, which is the hottest technology direction in early 2024, following AI Agent.

EVM, as the core component of Ethereum, is responsible for executing smart contracts and processing transactions. Although sequential execution ensures a deterministic order of transactions and contracts, it can lead to network congestion and delays under high load conditions. Parallel EVM significantly improves network throughput by allowing multiple operations to be executed simultaneously, enhancing the performance and scalability of the blockchain.

In fact, parallel EVM refers to high-performance EVM-compatible blockchains that not only introduce parallel execution but also encompass comprehensive upgrades from consensus, transaction processing, pipelining, storage to hardware acceleration. These improvements aim to enable blockchain networks to process more transactions in a shorter time, effectively addressing the network congestion and latency issues faced by traditional blockchains.

Monad: High-performance EVM-compatible Layer 1

Monad is a high-performance EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain developed by Monad Labs. It aims to improve system scalability while maintaining decentralization, addressing the low throughput issues of existing EVM-compatible blockchains.

The main advantage of Monad lies in its ability to process 10,000 transactions per second, with a block time of 1 second. This is mainly due to optimizations in the following four aspects:

1. MonadBFT: A high-performance consensus mechanism improved based on HotStuff, adopting a two-phase BFT algorithm and a hybrid signature scheme, and utilizing the RaptorCast protocol for message propagation.

2. Asynchronous execution: By separating consensus from execution, the execution throughput is significantly improved.

3. Parallel Execution: Adopt optimistic execution methods and use static code analyzers to predict dependencies between transactions.

4. MonadDB: A customized KV database for efficiently storing verified blockchain data.

MegaETH: Ultra-low latency Layer 2 solution

MegaETH is currently the fastest Layer 2 blockchain, focusing on real-time blockchain performance, providing ultra-low latency and scalability for applications that require instant responsiveness.

MegaETH has 100k TPS and an average block time of about 10ms, achieving millisecond-level response times even under high load. Its main technical features include:

1. Node specialization: Different role nodes perform different functions, including sequencers, validators, and full nodes.

2. Targeted Optimization: Conduct targeted optimizations for various issues faced by traditional EVM blockchains.

3. Mini Blocks: Pre-confirmation occurs every 10 milliseconds, significantly reducing the interval for propagation to the rest of the network.

Pharos: High-performance Layer 1 for RWA and payment ecosystem

Pharos is positioned as a high-performance EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, dedicated to creating the best RWA and payment ecosystem. It features ultra-high performance with the ability to process 50,000 transactions per second and consume 2 billion units of gas per second.

Pharos adopts a DP5 full-stack parallel architecture, fully upgrading from consensus, transactions, pipelines, storage to hardware acceleration:

1. Scalable consensus protocol: high throughput, low latency BFT consensus protocol.

2. Dual Virtual Machine Parallel Execution: Parallel EVM and WASM execution layers.

3. Full Lifecycle Asynchronous Pipeline: Achieve parallel and asynchronous processing of the entire transaction lifecycle and between blocks.

4. High-performance storage: Utilizing certified data structure (ADS), providing high throughput, low latency I/O, and cost-effective state storage.

5. Modular Special Processing Network ( SPN ): Seamlessly integrates new technologies and supports various use cases.

Summary

EVM has the most developers and the largest DApp ecosystem in the Web3 world, but Ethereum's scalability issues severely hinder its further development. Parallel EVM has become an important technological direction to address this problem.

Monad achieves a balance between scalability and decentralization through its parallel execution model, providing developers with a throughput of 10,000 TPS while maintaining EVM compatibility.

MegaETH performs exceptionally well in terms of latency and throughput, with an ultra-low latency of 10 milliseconds and a throughput of 100,000 TPS, making it particularly suitable for applications that require near-instantaneous responses.

Pharos has a transaction processing capability of up to 50K TPS and 2 gGas/s, with performance comparable to other emerging high-performance EVM blockchains. Its "Ant Gene" focuses on institutional clients and the compliance requirements of RWA-Fi, meeting the future market demand for compliant and efficient blockchain infrastructure.

These three projects each have their own characteristics, and developers can choose based on the priority of performance, decentralization, or specialization.