Forward the Original Title: Dismantling the SVM Arms Race: A Deep Dive into the Battle of Top Performers – Solayer, SOON, and Sonic SVM

What would the Crypto world look like if Ethereum reached 10,000 TPS or higher in a parallel universe?

As one of the most anticipated narratives in the Solana ecosystem for 2025, the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) appears to be turning this hypothetical scenario into reality through three key disruptors: Sonic, SOON, and Solayer.

Particularly in the context of Solana’s ecosystem needing a new narrative to take the lead in 2025, these three leading players in the SVM ecosystem are exploring differentiated technological approaches to address the industry’s ultimate challenges: high concurrency, low latency, and cross-chain compatibility. This article will break down the underlying architecture, ecosystem strategy, and market positioning of this SVM arms race, uncovering the deeper logic behind its development.

Why is SVM Important in 2025?

“I am the Ethereum killer, send money.” The era from 2018 to 2020, when new blockchains easily gained traction, secured funding, and fueled hype, is long gone. In recent years, the narrative of the so-called “Ethereum killer” has rarely been mentioned.

Simply copying the EVM architecture + TPS numbers is no longer sufficient to meet the evolutionary needs of Web3. According to the Electric Capital Developer Report, the fastest-growing cryptocurrency ecosystems in terms of new developers in 2024 were EigenLayer, Aptos, and Solana, with growth rates of 167%, 96%, and 83%, respectively.

While Ethereum remains the largest ecosystem in terms of developer share across all blockchain platforms, Solana has become the top choice for new developers. In fact, Solana is the first ecosystem since Ethereum’s inception in 2016 to attract more new developers than Ethereum itself.

This shift reflects a fundamental transformation in industry perception: the blockchain wars have transitioned from a battle of narratives to an execution environment revolution. With Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) undergoing continuous architectural upgrades and attracting new developers, it is not merely aiming to replace a particular blockchain but rather to redefine the technical paradigm of the smart contract execution layer.

So what exactly is SVM? SVM stands for Solana Virtual Machine, the execution environment responsible for processing transactions, smart contracts, and programs on the Solana network. It is designed specifically to address scalability and user experience challenges.

It is well known that the traditional Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) offers strong compatibility, but it struggles to keep up with high-frequency applications such as gaming, DeFi, and social networks. SVM, on the other hand, leverages Solana’s core performance to provide significantly faster transaction speeds and lower gas fees.

Most importantly, SVM supports parallel transaction processing, unlike EVM, which processes transactions sequentially (akin to having only one cashier during peak shopping hours). The advantage of SVM is that multiple transactions can be executed simultaneously, ensuring fast speeds even during high-demand periods, while also keeping transaction fees low.

As the Solana ecosystem nurtures SVM, and Sui and Aptos develop MoveVM, the technical evolution of the crypto ecosystem is forming a clear strategic roadmap: the next-generation blockchain wars are shifting focus from consensus layer innovations to execution environment breakthroughs.

SVM itself is an extension of Solana’s influence—the better SVM performs, the greater Solana’s impact on the industry.

The Technical Paths and Ecosystem Ambitions of the Three SVM Giants

SOON: The “Movement” of SVM

Objectively speaking, SOON can be seen as the “Movement” of SVM—prioritizing close community integration while adopting a unique approach to fundraising through co-builder rounds and a fair community launch model.

If Movement brought Move to Ethereum, then SOON takes it a step further by bringing SVM to all Layer 1 (L1) chains. It significantly differs from the conventional idea of a “Solana L2”—it does not rely on the Solana mainnet but instead uses SOON Stack to enable flexible scalability, allowing SVM to be deployed on other major Layer 1 blockchains.

This design allows any L2 in a blockchain ecosystem to benefit from SVM’s advantages, such as faster transaction speeds and lower gas fees. As a result, SOON operates in a completely different execution environment compared to other SVM solutions, requiring higher-performance rollups and an advanced technical stack to support it.

The current multi-chain expansion of the EVM ecosystem forces developers to repeatedly reinvent the wheel when deploying projects across multiple chains, leading to lower product quality and frustrating user experiences. SOON solves this problem by centralizing resources within a unified execution environment, significantly optimizing developer efficiency and user experience.

On the cost side, Ethereum’s “global fee model” often proves impractical—a high-demand NFT auction can spike transaction fees for all users. In contrast, SOON’s localized fee markets ensure that each transaction pays only what is necessary, without affecting others.

SOON’s private funding rounds have also attracted co-founders from major projects like Solana and Celestia, allocating 51% of its tokens to NFT buyers while incorporating community feedback into decision-making. This community-driven approach aligns with Movement’s philosophy—emphasizing community engagement and participation to drive success and share the benefits.

From a development progress standpoint, SOON is the fastest-moving among the three SVM giants. In a way, SOON isn’t just the most competitive player （”The Grind King”）—it’s actually solving key flaws of both EVM and Solana. If you’re a market strategist, studying SOON’s community-first and resource-focused approach could provide valuable insights—achieving both user experience and efficiency is not just a dream!

Solayer: The Best of Both Worlds—TVL and Efficiency

Over the past year, Solayer’s ability to pivot narratives has been textbook-worthy—transitioning from “Restaking Protocol” to “RWA Stablecoins”, and now to “Hardware-Accelerated SVM”, each shift perfectly aligning with market trends.

I’ve always believed that a project’s ceiling is determined by its team’s vision, execution ability, and a little luck. Solayer’s founders, Rachel (former core developer at SushiSwap) and Jason (founder of MPCVault), have both strong product intuition and deep technical expertise. Their acquisition of Fuzzland to enhance blockchain security is a prime example of their strategic vision—rapid pivots, strong fundraising, and flawless execution.

I first heard about Solayer over a year ago, back when EigenLayer was surging in popularity. Solayer emerged as the “EigenLayer of Solana”, focusing on staking solutions within the Solana ecosystem.

Because of this, Solayer initially built its foundation around Solana staking infrastructure, leveraging Solana’s staking data and underlying infrastructure to establish a strong early presence. However, recent developments indicate that Solayer has shifted beyond staking and is now entering the SVM technology race.

What is Solayer’s Competitive Edge in the SVM Space?

A key turning point for Solayer was its acquisition of the tech company FuzzLand and the subsequent creation of Solayer InfiniSVM. This move signaled a major strategic shift, positioning Solayer as the first blockchain to achieve hardware-accelerated scalability, with the ultimate goal of becoming a high-speed blockchain.

Solayer’s 2025 roadmap introduces Infiniband RDMA technology, aiming for 1 million TPS+ and 100 Gbps speeds. Its hardware acceleration strategy offloads key blockchain operations to specialized hardware components, which handle transaction sequencing, scheduling, and storage—enabling 1-millisecond transaction confirmations. If successfully implemented, this could position Solayer as a clear technological leader, even outperforming projects like Monad by a wide margin.

In simple terms, each transaction in the Solayer Chain follows a structured workflow. Transactions first enter a scalable entry node cluster, which filters and pre-processes transactions based on probabilistic predictions of future states.

All execution snapshots are then sent to a specialized ordering system, built using Intel Tofino switches and additional FPGA components. Most transactions are validated during the pre-execution phase, meaning they do not need to be re-executed by the ordering system.

Don’t understand? No worries! Here’s a simple example to help you grasp the concept:

• Imagine you’re at an airport security checkpoint, where every passenger’s luggage is scanned by a machine (equivalent to the transaction filtering and pre-execution stage). Most luggage is fine and can pass through immediately.
• However, if the machine detects a suspicious item (a conflicting transaction), the bag is sent to an advanced security inspection station for further examination (sequencer and re-execution). This station is equipped with top-tier scanning equipment and expert personnel (Intel Tofino switches and FPGA) to ensure the inspection is both efficient and fair.
• In this airport, simple luggage scans can process up to 1.6 billion bags per second (TPS for standard transactions). Even bags flagged for further inspection can still be processed at a rate of 890,000 per second (TPS for conflicting transactions).
• In other words, the airport (Solayer’s SVM) can simultaneously handle billions of standard baggage checks per second while efficiently managing millions of flagged cases, maintaining both high efficiency and fairness.

Just like SOON, Solayer has also gained recognition from Solana and major institutional investors. Across two funding rounds, it has secured investment from Solana co-founder Toly, as well as top-tier backers such as Binance Labs (now YZi Labs) and Polychain.

Sonic SVM: The “Breakthrough Engine” for Blockchain Gaming infrastructure

Sonic SVM was the earliest project in the SVM ecosystem to conduct a TGE (Token Generation Event) and is currently listed on most major exchanges except Binance.

Unlike the other SVM projects mentioned earlier, Sonic SVM focuses specifically on gaming—its innovative design is tailored to handle high-concurrency and instant transaction demands in gaming environments.

The entire Sonic SVM technology is built on the HyperGrid framework. HyperGrid is also Solana’s first concurrent extension framework. It is designed to achieve a high degree of customization and scalability while maintaining native composability with Solana.

One of its standout features is that HyperGrid allows developers to write applications in an EVM-compatible environment but execute them on Solana. Since the settlement layer remains Solana, developers can use familiar programming languages instead of learning a completely new blockchain, significantly reducing onboarding time.

Notably, Sonic SVM is the first “Grid instance” within the HyperGrid framework—a relationship somewhat similar to Virtuals and Luna.

In addition, Sonic’s Guardian Nodes system focuses on the verification of user behavior on the chain. Through this mechanism, it effectively prevents robot attacks and malicious behaviors, providing a safer interactive environment for game players. The operation of nodes also provides guarantee for the stability of network performance.

Another key highlight of Sonic is its TikTok Mini App - SonicX. Leveraging TikTok’s huge user base, SonicX generates a wallet bound to TikTok accounts for users through a simple login method, thereby achieving seamless account abstraction.

This design greatly lowers the entry barrier for Web3, allowing ordinary users to participate in various activities of chain games without knowing private keys and on-chain operations. (However, TikTok currently faces regulatory risks in the U.S. and Europe, casting uncertainty over its long-term viability as a user acquisition channel).

Generally speaking, each of the three major projects of the SVM track has its own distinct focus:

• Sonic SVM: Prioritizes blockchain gaming by integrating with TikTok for user acquisition and offering seamless on-chain interactions.
• Solayer: Focuses on performance optimization with hardware-accelerated SVM, evolving from restaking and liquidity optimization to expand its ecosystem.
• SOON: Adopts a community-driven approach, following Movement’s philosophy to extend SVM beyond Solana and into the broader blockchain world.

Conclusion

A great wind rises from the slightest breeze. Behind every successful token launch, there is often a crucial clue: the market’s need for infrastructure is being redefined!

From DeFi to blockchain gaming to social applications, users are demanding faster speeds, lower costs, and better experiences more than ever. In this process, the limitations of the traditional EVM have become increasingly apparent. It is precisely these constraints that make SVM’s innovations more essential than ever.

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1. This article is reproduced from [foresightnews]. Forward the Original Title: Dismantling the SVM Arms Race: A Deep Dive into the Battle of Top Performers – Solayer, SOON, and Sonic SVM. The copyright belongs to the original author [JiaYi]. If you have any objection to the reprint, please contact Gate Learn team, the team will handle it as soon as possible according to relevant procedures.
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