26 Dec 2023
A new state to the Solana Ecosystem: An Enhancement to its EVM compatibility
In this article, we'll cover a new merge which helps improves developer experience on the Solana and Ethereum ecosystem.
Ethereum stands to be the most dominant protocol/blockchain which supports smart contracts and enables developers to build decentralized applications on it which is quite contrary to the bitcoin network.
As a layer-1, the Ethereum blockchain leaves users facing difficulties and constraints while deploying contracts, carrying out transactions, and other interactions that may be involved. Due to it's architectural structure, other protocols can be forked out of Ethereum to solve a specific problem which the Ethereum users face.
Most of these protocols exists as other blockchains, sidechains, and even rollups.
Solana on the other hand is built using a BPF uploader which is solely designed for high throughput and low gas fees. This structure gives the Solana Blockchain a different virtual machine that doesn't follow the rules of Ethereum Virtual Machine (It's EVM).
A Witness statement
Recently, Solana surpassed Ethereum in trading volume and onchain interactions, asides any other factors such as farming for airdrops may be involved in the Solana ecosystem users migrating from the Ethereum ecosystem have a seamless experience due to its low gas fees (approx. $0.002 for transactions), and it's high throughput due to its format of carrying out executions in a parallel format.
In essence, Solana records transactions much more faster with a lower gas fees equivalent to that of the Ethereum network.
A solution to the Ethereum Ecosystem: The Neon EVM
Neon EVM is a Solana-compatible environment that follows Ethereum virtual machine rules yet processes transactions to the Solana Network.
It wraps Ethereum-like transactions and sends them to Solana Nodes for the addition of blocks to enable transactions to have high finality and low gas fees during specific interactions.
For this cross-chain layer-1 scaling, the Neon EVM architecture is built on two primary components:
- Neon EVM Program
- Neon Proxy
Other components includes , NeonPass, and its sub-participants including EVM Users and Neon Operators.
How Neon EVM Works
Coupled with its main components, as an intermediary between these two blockchains, there is a two-way communication on the Neon EVM which is a result of being able to follow Ethereum rules and being compatible with the Solana virtual machine.
Neon EVM helps developers leverage the functionality of the parallel execution format with transactions that Solana runs to create an environment for easy communication.
On the Ethereum network, when changing the state of a blockchain(this may be in the form of adding blocks or calling a smart contract) these changes are recorded and in a sequential order. One after the other which makes the network quite slow on average and in unfavorable times even slower and gas fees rise.
With parallel execution, fragments of different blockchain store specific modifications and are later on merged the different states which they hold. This makes a network have less congestion and high-speed
Neon EVM is compiled into the BFT of the Solana Virtual Machine which makes it easy to leverage the Solana functionalities.
The Neon EVM run like a smart contract on the Solana Ecosystem. There are multiple components to it as mentioned earlier.
The Neon Proxy
The NEON proxy acts as an endpoint that provides an Ethereum RPC that accepts Ethereum-like transactions and then wraps/constructs them into Solana transactions so that they can run on Solana.
The proxy first emulates the transactions and determines which accounts/states the transactions will access (as this is required for transactions to be processed in parallel on Solana)
At a very high level, it abstracts away the differences/complexities between the Solana and Ethereum architectures whilst providing a solution for developers to easily migrate Ethereum-based DAPPs over and use existing Ethereum tooling, whilst taking advantage of the scalability of Solana.
The Neon EVM Program
This on the other hand receives the wrapped transactions from the Neon Proxy while following the Ethereum rules to run transactions on Solana, it unwraps the transactions checking account signatures before signing and recording into the Solana BFP then the state can be updated.
Some token-like transactions can be carried out in parallel format while some in a sequential format (this depends on the type of tokens involved during transactions).
To enable transactions between Neon and Solana, the NeonPass run by neon operators would be needed. This serves more like the function of a bridge but it isn't as bridges would need to wrap tokens before swapping. NeonPass performs the swap in either direction without wrapping the tokens. In essence, it makes SPL-tokens run like the Ethereum natives (ERC-20) on Neon.
In Conclusion
Neon EVM records 730TPS (transactions per second) on its mainnet. Developers and users can have a better experience if apps can be built using the Neon EVM. Gaming applications, which would much more be facilitated by the speed of Solana.
Other layer-1 scaling solutions are one way or the other bringing solutions and now is a breakthrough for the userbase of Solana to be expanded through future Ethereum Dapps to be built as smart contracts can be built on the Solana blockchain through the Neon EVM.
The Ethereum Cancum upgrade prepared for Q1 to improve RollUps would be a breakthrough for scalability coupled with the Neon EVM, Ethereum remains the mother of DeFi.
Over and above all, it's highly advisable for you as a developer or future contributor to be in touch with the Neon EVM community to get the latest updates on the full potential that can be reached.
Disclaimer: Nothing on this site should be construed as a financial investment recommendation. It’s important to understand that investing is a high-risk activity. Investments expose money to potential loss.
