The momentum of parallel EVM development is strong: Three major projects' Testnets have been launched successively.

Recently, three important parallel EVM projects have launched their Testnets one after another. Monad, MegaETH, and Pharos launched their respective Testnets on February 19, March 21, and March 24. This series of actions seems to indicate that, following AI Agent, parallel EVM has once again become the focus of the Web3 technology field.

The EVM, as a core component of Ethereum, is responsible for executing smart contracts and processing transactions. The traditional EVM adopts a sequential execution model, which, while ensuring the deterministic order and security of transactions, can easily lead to network congestion and delays under high load conditions. The parallel EVM technology significantly improves network throughput by allowing multiple operations to be executed simultaneously, enhancing the performance and scalability of the blockchain.

In fact, the parallel EVM represents a comprehensively upgraded high-performance EVM-compatible blockchain technology. It not only introduces parallel execution but also fully optimizes aspects such as consensus, transaction processing, pipelining, storage systems, and hardware acceleration. This technology aims to significantly reduce transaction processing time, enhance network throughput, and effectively address the congestion and latency issues faced by traditional blockchains.

Monad: Striving for a Balance Between High Performance and Decentralization

Monad is a high-performance EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain dedicated to improving system scalability while maintaining decentralization. Its core advantage lies in its ability to process 10,000 transactions per second, with a block time of just 1 second.

The technical innovations of Monad are mainly reflected in the following aspects:

1. MonadBFT: This is a high-performance consensus mechanism based on an improved version of HotStuff. It employs a two-phase BFT algorithm, has optimistic responsiveness, and uses a hybrid signature scheme to address scalability issues.

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.

3. Parallel Execution: Monad adopts an optimistic execution approach, allowing subsequent transactions to begin execution before the preceding transactions are completed. By predicting dependencies between transactions through static code analysis, it avoids invalid parallel execution.

4. MonadDB: This is a custom KV database optimized for blockchain data storage. It natively implements the Merkle Patricia Trie data structure in disk and memory and uses technologies such as asynchronous I/O to enhance performance.

MegaETH: A Layer 2 solution focused on real-time performance

MegaETH is positioned as the fastest Layer 2 blockchain currently, focusing on providing ultra-low latency and high scalability for applications that require instant response. It can achieve 100k TPS and approximately 10ms block time, maintaining millisecond-level response even under high load.

The technical features of MegaETH include:

1. Node specialization: Assign different functions to different roles of nodes, including sequencers, validators, and full nodes, to optimize network performance.

2. Targeted Optimization: Conduct targeted optimizations for various issues faced by traditional EVM, such as designing efficient state Tries and using JIT compilers.

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

Pharos: High-Performance Layer 1 for RWA and Payment Ecosystem

Pharos is a high-performance EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, focused on providing optimal solutions for RWA (Real World Assets) and payment ecosystems. It claims to handle 50,000 transactions per second, consuming 2 billion units of gas per second.

Pharos proposed the "Degree of Parallelization (DP)" framework, which divides the parallelization capability of the blockchain into six levels. Pharos adopts the highest level DP5 full-stack parallel architecture, including:

1. Scalable Consensus Protocol
2. Dual Virtual Machine Parallel Execution
3. Full Lifecycle Asynchronous Pipeline
4. High-performance storage system
5. Modular Special Processing Network

These three projects each have their own characteristics. Monad seeks a balance between scalability and decentralization, MegaETH excels in latency and throughput, while Pharos stands out with its full-stack parallel architecture and focus on RWA. Developers need to weigh performance, degree of decentralization, and specialization when making their choices based on their own needs. With the further development of these projects, parallel EVM technology is expected to bring significant performance improvements and new application possibilities to the blockchain ecosystem.