New Developments in Parallel EVM Technology: A Comparison of Monad, MegaETH, and Pharos

Recently, three important parallel EVM projects have successively launched their testnets. Monad went live with its test network on February 19, MegaETH on March 21, and Pharos on March 24. This series of actions seems to indicate that the focus of Web3 technology development has once again returned to the highly anticipated topic of parallel EVM in early 2024.

The EVM, as a core component of Ethereum, is responsible for executing smart contracts and processing transactions. Although the sequential execution model of the EVM ensures the determinism and security of transactions, it is prone to network congestion and latency issues under high load conditions. Parallel EVM technology significantly enhances network throughput by allowing multiple operations to be executed in parallel, thereby improving the overall performance and scalability of the blockchain.

In fact, parallel EVM refers not only to parallel execution but also to comprehensive upgrades in various aspects, including consensus mechanisms, transaction processing, pipeline optimization, storage systems, and hardware acceleration. These improvements aim to enable blockchain networks to process more transactions in a shorter amount of time, effectively addressing the network congestion and latency issues faced by traditional blockchains.

Next, we will delve into the background and technical architecture of the three projects: Monad, MegaETH, and Pharos.

Monad

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

Monad Labs was founded in 2022 by three co-founders, two of whom come from a market-making background and one from a non-cryptocurrency field. The company has completed two rounds of financing, totaling $244 million, with a valuation of up to $3 billion.

The main advantage of Monad is its ability to process 10,000 transactions per second, with a block time of just 1 second. This high performance is primarily attributed to the optimization in the following four aspects:

1. MonadBFT: An improved high-performance consensus mechanism based on HotStuff. It employs a two-phase BFT algorithm, featuring optimistic responsiveness and efficient communication overhead. It also introduces a hybrid signature scheme and the RaptorCast protocol, enhancing network efficiency and fault tolerance.

2. Asynchronous execution: By separating consensus from execution, Monad significantly increases execution throughput. This design allows the execution process to utilize the entire block time, rather than just a small portion of it.

3. Parallel Execution: Monads adopt an optimistic execution approach, allowing subsequent transactions to begin execution before the preceding transactions are completed. By tracking the inputs used during the execution process and comparing them with the outputs of previous transactions, the correctness of the execution results is ensured.

4. MonadDB: This is a custom KV database designed for storing verified blockchain data. It natively implements the Merkle Patricia Trie data structure on disk and in memory and optimizes performance using technologies such as asynchronous I/O and concurrency control.

MegaETH

MegaETH is a Layer2 solution focused on real-time blockchain performance, developed by MegaLabs. It provides ultra-low latency and high scalability for applications that require instant response.

MegaLabs was established in early 2023, with team members from prestigious universities such as Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as renowned blockchain companies like Consensys. The company has completed two rounds of financing, totaling over 30 million dollars, with a valuation exceeding 200 million dollars.

The outstanding feature of MegaETH is its processing capacity of 100k TPS and a block time of approximately 10ms, achieving millisecond-level response even under high load. This exceptional performance mainly stems from the following technical characteristics:

1. Node specialization: MegaETH assigns different functions to different roles of nodes, including sorters, validators, and full nodes, with each type of node undertaking specific tasks and having different hardware requirements.

2. Targeted Optimization: In response to the various issues faced by traditional EVM blockchains, MegaETH has implemented a series of targeted optimization measures, including the design of an efficient state Trie, the adoption of parallel execution strategies, and the use of a JIT compiler.

3. Mini Blocks: MegaETH performs a pre-confirmation every 10 milliseconds, called Mini Blocks. This design greatly reduces the time it takes for transactions to propagate to the rest of the network while alleviating the burden on light clients.

Pharos

Pharos is positioned as a high-performance EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, dedicated to creating the best RWA and payment ecosystem. It claims to have an ultra-high performance of processing 50,000 transactions per second and consuming 2 billion gas units per second.

Pharos was established in 2024, with team members from well-known blockchain projects such as Ant Chain, Solana Labs, OKX, Stellar, and Ripple. The company has completed a seed round financing of $8 million.

Pharos proposed the "Degree of Parallelization (DP)" framework, which divides the blockchain parallelization capabilities into six levels (DP0-DP5). Pharos adopts the DP5 full-stack parallel architecture, comprehensively upgrading from consensus, transactions, pipelining, storage to hardware acceleration:

1. Scalable Consensus Protocol: A high-throughput, low-latency BFT consensus protocol.

2. Dual virtual machines execute in parallel: EVM and WASM are executed in parallel using advanced compilation technology.

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

4. High-performance storage: Using 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 software, hardware, and geographical decentralization, supporting a variety of use cases and emerging technologies.

Summary

EVM has the largest developer community and application ecosystem in the Web3 world, but Ethereum's scalability issues severely hinder its further development. Therefore, parallel EVM has become one of the most important technological directions.

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. Its independent consensus mechanism offers autonomy but also means a loss of Ethereum's security guarantees.

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. However, its centralized orderer design may raise concerns regarding decentralization.

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. What sets Pharos apart is its focus on institutional clients and compliance requirements for RWA-Fi, which is expected to meet the future market demand for compliant and efficient blockchain infrastructure.

From the public data, the performance of MegaETH and Pharos seems to be superior to Monad, but considering that Monad has the largest scale of financing and ample development resources for technological breakthroughs, there is no absolute leader among these three projects. Developers need to weigh the priorities of performance, decentralization, and specialization when making their choices.