Sei: A Layer-1 Blockchain Designed for Decentralized Trading and Asset Management

Imagine a blockchain built for speed and designed to overcome the common challenges of decentralized trading — this is what Sei attempts to achieve.

Sei is a Layer-1 blockchain designed for decentralized trading and asset management. It’s built within the Cosmos ecosystem and aims to solve challenges faced by decentralized exchanges (DEXs), such as slow transaction speeds and liquidity issues.

Here's a closer look at Sei, its features, and how to use it.

Key Highlights

Sei is designed for speed and could theoretically handle up to 12,500 transactions per second, with a block finality of 400 milliseconds.

It stands out with its parallel processing, which could cut congestion and lower fees compared to Ethereum.

Developers, traders, and community members could benefit from Sei's easy-to-use tools, low fees, and scalable infrastructure.

What is Sei?

Sei is a Layer-1 blockchain designed to enhance the trading of digital assets. Built within the Cosmos ecosystem, Sei aims to solve challenges faced by decentralized exchanges (DEXs), such as slow transaction speeds and liquidity issues.

Sei could theoretically handle up to 12,500 transactions per second using advanced technology like parallel EVM processing, and with a block finality (the time it takes for a block to be completely processed) of just 400 milliseconds.

One key highlight of Sei is its ability to process transactions in parallel. This sets it apart from blockchains like Ethereum, where transactions are processed sequentially, which can sometimes lead to bottlenecks and congestion during peak times, potentially leading to higher gas fees.

With its parallel EVM, Sei could combine the strengths of both Ethereum and Solana, enabling faster and more systematic execution of smart contracts. Sei could be well-suited for building decentralized exchanges, gaming platforms, and NFT marketplaces thanks to its built-in order-matching engine and twin-turbo consensus mechanism.

The goal of Sei is to let traders trade in real-time while protecting them from problems like front-running, where other traders change the order of transactions to get an advantage. In this sense, Sei aspires to be a high-speed trading platform, kind of like a decentralized version of NASDAQ, optimized for fast, fair, and transparent trading of digital assets. It’s designed to handle large volumes of transactions without the delays seen in older blockchain networks.

Sei’s Features

Sei’s blockchain aims to improve performance and scalability — here’s a breakdown of its features.

Twin-turbo consensus

The twin-turbo consensus would put some fire under Sei’s belly by allowing it to achieve transaction finality in under 400 milliseconds. This means the transaction could be confirmed almost instantly, similar to the responsiveness you get when hitting “play” on a music app.

Optimistic Parallelization

Sei uses a parallel processing method to handle transactions more quickly. Developers love this because it doesn’t require any extra work. Ethereum-based applications can run on Sei with better performance without changing any code.

This feature aims to allow Sei to manage transaction conflicts automatically, allowing for smoother, higher-throughput operations.

SeiDB

This advanced storage solution is designed to manage large amounts of data easily. By improving how data is stored and retrieved, SeiDB helps the blockchain support its high transaction throughput while reducing the load on network nodes.

Interoperable EVM integration

Sei’s integration with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) offers flexibility. It allows for full backward compatibility with Ethereum, enabling Ethereum-based decentralized applications (DApps) to migrate to Sei without any changes.

Sei could improve the performance of these apps, potentially offering up to 100x improvements in throughput compared to standard EVM environments.

Who can use Sei?

Sei is a blockchain designed to have a wide range of use-cases, so here’s a breakdown of who can use Sei.

Developers

If you’re a developer familiar with Ethereum, Sei could be an excellent platform due to its EVM compatibility. Thanks to its backwards-compatible setup, you can easily port your existing dapps without rewriting code.

Devs in the DeFi, NFT, and GameFi spaces might also find Sei’s tools useful, as the platform supports features like smart contracts using CosmWasm. This helps make building applications more seamless, especially for those familiar with Rust or Solidity.

Traders

Sei can be interesting for high-frequency and algorithmic traders. It’s designed with trading in mind, with its order-matching engine and features like frequent batch auctioning, which can help reduce issues like frontrunning.

The platform’s fast block finality time is also a strong feature for traders that might be put off by the challenges faced by some other DEXs.

Community Members

Sei promises community members a fast and low-fee experience when interacting with dapps. Whether you’re staking tokens, trading NFTs, or using DeFi platforms, the alleged low transaction costs and high throughput can make Sei accessible to those looking for a user-friendly blockchain.

How to Get Started with Sei?

Getting started