Comparison of Parallel EVM Technology: Monad, MegaETH, and Pharos

Recently, three parallel EVM projects have successively launched their testnets: Monad, MegaETH, and Pharos. The main narrative of Web3 technology seems to have returned to parallel EVM after the AI Agent, which is the hottest topic at the beginning of 2024.

EVM is the core of Ethereum, responsible for executing smart contracts and processing transactions. While sequential execution ensures that transactions and smart contracts can be executed in a deterministic order, ensuring security, it may lead to network congestion and delays under high load conditions.

Parallel EVM greatly increases the network's throughput by allowing multiple operations to be executed simultaneously, thereby enhancing the overall 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 feature comprehensive upgrades from consensus, transactions, pipelining, storage, to hardware acceleration, aimed at enabling blockchain networks to process more transactions in a shorter time, effectively addressing the network congestion and latency issues of traditional blockchains.

Monad

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

The key advantage of Monad is that it can handle up to 10,000 transactions per second and has a block time of 1 second. This is primarily due to optimizations in the following four areas:

1. MonadBFT: A high-performance consensus mechanism, an improved version based on HotStuff.

2. Asynchronous Execution: Significantly improves execution throughput by separating consensus from execution.

3. Parallel Execution: Use optimistic execution methods to start executing subsequent transactions before the earlier transactions in the block are completed.

4. MonadDB: A custom KV database designed to maintain full compatibility with Ethereum while delivering high performance.

MegaETH

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 response.

MegaETH has a TPS of 100k and a block time of approximately 10ms, achieving millisecond-level response times even under high load. Key technical features include:

1. Node Specialization: Different role nodes perform different functions, requiring different hardware configurations.

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

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

Pharos

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

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

1. Scalable Consensus Protocol
2. Parallel execution of dual virtual machines
3. Full Lifecycle Asynchronous Pipeline
4. High-performance storage with certified data structure (ADS)
5. Modular Specialized Processing Network (SPN)

Summary

Monad achieves a balance between scalability and decentralization through its parallel execution model, providing developers with 10,000 TPS throughput without compromising EVM compatibility.

MegaETH is undoubtedly the best in terms of latency and throughput (TPS), with ultra-low latency of 10 milliseconds and a throughput of 100,000 TPS, suitable for application scenarios that require near-instantaneous response.

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

There is essentially no absolute leader among the competition between these three projects; developers need to balance performance, decentralization, and specialization.