What is Sei Network? The Differentiated Positioning of a Trading-Focused Public Chain
Sei is a Layer 1 public chain purpose-built for transaction scenarios. Its differentiation manifests across two core dimensions: technically, it leverages a parallelized EVM and Twin-Turbo consensus to compress transaction confirmation to sub-second latency; strategically, it is positioned as the "settlement layer for the modern economy" — serving not just cryptocurrency trading, but a far broader scope of value exchange use cases including RWA (Real-World Assets), AI agent payments, stablecoin settlement and more. A critical turning point arrived in 2026 with the Giga upgrade, as Sei officially stepped away from the Cosmos ecosystem to pivot fully to a pure EVM roadmap, targeting 200,000 TPS and institutional-grade trading infrastructure.
1. Understand Sei's Differentiated Positioning: Not a General-Purpose Public Chain, But a "Transaction-Specific Chain"
Grasp the fundamental differences between Sei and other public chains including Ethereum and Solana.
Sei's positioning diverged from general-purpose public chains from its very inception. Its 2022 whitepaper clearly states: "The demand for digital asset exchange runs through every corner of crypto". By 2026, this vision has been expanded to become "infrastructure for the modern economy" — it is designed to serve all forms of value exchange, not just crypto trading, covering scenarios such as RWA, AI agent payments, and real-time settlement.
Three layers of differentiated logic:
Technical differentiation: It is not a general-purpose smart contract platform, but an execution layer optimized specifically for high-frequency trading
Ecosystem differentiation: It focuses on high-throughput vertical use cases including RWA, derivatives, and blockchain games, rather than chasing maximum application diversity
Institutional differentiation: It prioritizes institutional-grade requirements — compliance tools (Elliptic AML), security solutions (Chainlink, Fireblocks), and custody integrations (Ledger Enterprise) are all built to serve institutional users
You can clearly see that Sei is not "just another L1", but an "exchange-native chain" purpose-optimized for transaction scenarios.
To use a metaphor: Ethereum is a "general shopping mall", Solana is a "high-speed shopping mall", and Sei is a "stock exchange" — every design of Sei serves the single core scenario of "trading", with no extra unrelated functionality.
2. Core Technical Advantages: Parallelized EVM + Twin-Turbo Consensus
Learn about the two key technical pillars that power Sei's high performance.
Parallelized EVM
Traditional EVM (Ethereum) processes transactions sequentially one by one — if a user is minting an NFT, all other users have to wait in line
Sei v2 adopts optimistic parallel execution: it assumes the vast majority of transactions do not conflict, and processes them simultaneously. If a conflict occurs (for example, two transactions operating on the same asset), only the conflicting transactions are re-executed, without impacting the entire block
Result: Developers write contracts in Solidity and deploy them to Sei with zero code changes, while gaining roughly 40x performance improvement
Twin-Turbo Consensus
Smart block propagation: Block proposers only send transaction hashes, and validator nodes reconstruct blocks using their local mempool, drastically reducing data transmission volume
Optimistic block processing: Validators start processing blocks before they are fully received, skipping redundant steps in traditional consensus workflows
Result: Sub-second finality (around 380-400 milliseconds), making Sei one of the fastest L1 public chains available today
The two core technologies and their effects are clear: the parallelized EVM allows transactions of the same type to run at the same time, while Twin-Turbo consensus pushes confirmation latency down to under 400 milliseconds.
Aggregated performance metrics: Test environment throughput hits around 12,500 TPS, with an ultimate target of 200,000+ TPS after the Giga upgrade. Gas fees are denominated in SEI and remain relatively low.
3. 2026 Critical Turning Point: SIP-3 and Departure from the Cosmos Ecosystem
Understand Sei's most important strategic shift in 2026 — moving from a "dual Cosmos + EVM engine" model to a "pure EVM single engine" roadmap.
In May 2025, the Sei community passed the SIP-3 proposal, whose core purpose is to pave the way for Sei Giga, gradually deprecate Cosmos WASM and native Cosmos transactions, and turn Sei into a fully pure EVM chain.
Specific changes:
v6.3 (January 2026): EVM addresses will gain access to all staking features, and indexers and custody providers will be able to read staking balance changes via EVM APIs
v6.4 (Q1 2026): Inbound IBC transfers will be disabled. Users will no longer be able to bridge Cosmos native tokens including ATOM, USDC.n to Sei. Users holding IBC assets are required to move them off Sei before the upgrade goes live
Subsequent releases: Outbound IBC transfers will be disabled, and the native oracle solution will be deprecated and replaced by third-party providers including Chainlink and Pyth
The logic behind choosing the pure EVM path:
Clearer technical roadmap: No need to maintain two separate execution environments (Cosmos + EVM), allowing Sei to focus all resources on optimizing EVM performance
Larger developer ecosystem: There are hundreds of thousands of Solidity developers globally, while the CosmWasm developer pool is far smaller
Better institutional compatibility: The EVM toolchain (Hardhat, Foundry, Alchemy etc.) is far more mature and familiar to institutional users
It is clear that Sei is transitioning from a "dual Cosmos + EVM engine" chain to a pure EVM L1, driven by the need for a more streamlined codebase for the Giga upgrade, as well as the EVM ecosystem's stronger appeal to institutional players.
Important note for users holding Cosmos ecosystem assets such as ATOM and USDC.n: after inbound IBC transfers are disabled, these assets can no longer be bridged to Sei. The official team advises users to withdraw these assets off Sei via dedicated frontends ahead of the upgrade.
4. Sei Giga: The 2026 Architectural Leap
Learn about the largest upgrade Sei has ever developed: Giga.
Sei Giga is positioned as an "architectural leap" for the entire network, with the goal of turning Sei into "the Visa of the AI agent economy" — processing machine-to-machine payments at sub-second speed.
Core design of Giga:
Multi-Proposer EVM: Multiple nodes can propose blocks simultaneously, drastically increasing parallelism
Async Execution: Transaction ordering and execution are decoupled to make full use of multi-core hardware resources
Throughput target: 200,000+ TPS, 5 gigagas per second
Giga post-quantum security research: Sei Labs has published technical research exploring how to maintain quantum security in the Giga upgrade without sacrificing performance. Traditional post-quantum signatures would push bandwidth requirements from 13 MB/s to 1.57 GB/s, and Sei is exploring advanced cryptographic optimizations to resolve this bottleneck.
Giga is the core narrative for Sei in 2026: evolving from a "high-speed L1" to an "ultra-large scale settlement layer", while making long-term preparations to defend against quantum computing threats.
5. Ecosystem Status and Institutional Adoption
Get a clear view of Sei's real-world ecosystem operation.
On-chain activity (January 2026 data):
Daily active addresses: 1.5 million+, growing 100% in 4 months
19 dApps have over 100,000 monthly active addresses, and 11 blockchain games have over 300,000 monthly active addresses
Daily transaction volume exceeds 1.6 million transactions
Stablecoins and payments:
P2P stablecoin supply grew 152% in 6 months, approaching $100 million USD
Weekly stablecoin transaction volume keeps growing steadily, reflecting the ongoing rollout of real-world payment use cases
Ecosystem projects:
Yei Finance: Cumulative trading volume hits $685 million USD, with total protocol revenue of $7.3 million USD
TakaraLend: Ranks 2nd among all EVM lending dApps by daily active addresses
Carbon DeFi's Arb Fast Lane: 29% week-over-week active user growth
Institutional adoption:
Tokenized funds affiliated with BlackRock, Apollo, and Brevan Howard are deployed on Sei via the KAIO platform
Ledger Enterprise has integrated Sei into its institutional custody platform
The US state of Wyoming has listed Sei as one of the candidate platforms for its state stablecoin WYST
RWA assets including Ondo's USDY and Securitize's ACRED have already launched on Sei
Several key current metrics of Sei stand out: 1.5 million daily active addresses, nearly $100 million in P2P stablecoin supply, $685 million in cumulative Yei Finance trading volume, and multiple institutional-grade RWA assets already deployed on the network.
How can you confirm you fully understand Sei's differentiated positioning?
You should be able to clearly explain three core points: 1) Sei is not a general-purpose public chain, but a transaction-optimized L1 whose scope of "trading" services has expanded from crypto to broader value exchange scenarios including RWA and AI payments; 2) Its core technical stack is parallelized EVM + Twin-Turbo consensus, delivering ~400ms confirmation latency, with the 2026 Giga upgrade targeting 200,000 TPS; 3) Strategically, Sei is transitioning from the "dual Cosmos + EVM engine" model to a pure EVM chain to better serve institutional users and the massive EVM developer community. If you want to dive deeper into Sei Giga's technical details or participate in ecosystem development, you can refer to Sei's official blog.
