This is a series of articles about SVM - this being the second article. In the first and introduction article, we discussed what SVM is, and what makes SVM unique.
In this article, we ask the burning question:
As we answer the question, we identified 4 aspects as to why one would choose SVM.
1. Structural Issues in Ethereum’s Fee Market
The Ethereum fee market has long been a point of contention within the blockchain community. The network operates on a global fee market mechanism, where high-demand transactions, such as those involving NFTs, can drive up the costs for all other transactions. This leads to a scenario where users have to pay exorbitantly high fees during times of network congestion, making the network less accessible and more expensive for everyday transactions. The Solana Virtual Machine, with its localized fee market, offers a solution to this problem by allowing transaction fees to be determined independently for each smart contract, thus preventing unrelated transactions from affecting each other’s costs.
2. EVM Performance Bottlenecks
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is inherently limited by its design, which processes transactions in a single-threaded environment. This sequential processing creates a bottleneck, limiting the number of transactions that can be processed simultaneously. As a result, during periods of high demand, the network becomes congested, leading to delays and higher transaction fees. In contrast, the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) leverages parallel processing, allowing it to handle multiple transactions simultaneously. This not only increases the throughput of the network but also ensures that it remains responsive and cost-effective even during periods of high demand.
3. Overestimation of EVM’s Ecosystem Advantages
The Ethereum ecosystem is often touted as a major advantage of using the EVM, given the extensive developer community, the plethora of decentralized applications (dApps), and the established infrastructure. However, this advantage is not as significant as it might appear. In contrast, the Solana ecosystem is rapidly growing and benefits from the inherent efficiencies of the SVM. More importantly, SVM fosters a superior engineering culture and builder environment, attracting innovative developers who are driving rapid advancements and creating robust, scalable solutions. This supportive and dynamic community makes SVM a more viable long-term solution for developers and users seeking a scalable and cost-effective blockchain platform.
4. Complexity of zk-VMs
While zk VMs and other virtual machine technologies have gained attention for their potential to enhance privacy and scalability, they face several limitations that may hinder their development and widespread adoption. zk VMs, or zero-knowledge virtual machines, employ sophisticated cryptographic techniques to ensure privacy and scalability. However, the complexity of these techniques makes the development and maintenance of zk VMs significantly more challenging. Developers need specialized knowledge in cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs, which are not as widely understood or accessible as the skills required for developing on more established platforms like the EVM or SVM. This steep learning curve can slow down innovation and the rollout of zk VM-based applications.
The biggest problem with zk VMs today is their economic impracticality. The cost of operating zero-knowledge proofs is prohibitively high, making it difficult to achieve large-scale applications that could drive down these costs through economies of scale. Without widespread adoption and significant usage, the expenses associated with zk VMs remain elevated, hindering their ability to reduce proof costs and making them less viable for broader implementation.
Summary
In short, the 4 aspects as to why one would choose SVM are: fees, performance, ecosystem advantage and steepness of learning curve. SVM as a stack and as an upcoming ecosystem is seeing accelerated adoption and increase in mindshare.
This is the end of the article, but the SVM acceleration has just begun.
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SOON Stack is an SVM framework that allows for any SVM L2 to be deployed on any L1.
