Sei Dumps Dual-VM Chaos—Goes All-In on Ethereum Compatibility

Layer-1 blockchain Sei just axed its CosmWasm support in a brutal simplification play. The move scraps parallel virtual machines to bet everything on EVM dominance—gambling that Ethereum’s developer army matters more than ideological purity.

Why this hurts: Rust loyalists scream betrayal. Why it works: Every VC-backed chain eventually kneels to Solidity’s network effects. The ’modular’ dream takes another hit as another project admits fragmentation kills adoption.

Cynic’s corner: Another ’Ethereum killer’ quietly morphs into an ETH sidecar—just in time for the next hype cycle. Your decentralized future, brought to you by herd mentality.

With the proposal, only EVM addresses can initiate transactions, and all Cosmos-based contracts will be deprecated and subsequently removed.

It said:

“The proposal recommends that Only EVM addresses be allowed to initiate transactions on Sei. The network will support EVM-only transactions going forward. CosmWasm contracts and native Cosmos message handling will be deprecated and removed.”

However, Sei native addresses will remain functional for internal protocol processes such as validator addresses. Core functionalities such as governance and staking will also remain available through precompiles.

Upgrade to EVM-only to happen in three phases

Meanwhile, the proposal noted that the upgrade’s simplicity will benefit users and network stakeholders in the long run. With the network already offering one of the fastest blockchain transactions, Sei Labs expects sole EVM functionality to improve adoption and developer experience.

The proposal also broke down the planned upgrade into three high-level milestones. In the first phase, developers will create EVM pointers to make Cosmos and CosmWasm assets accessible from the EVM side.

Once that is done, the developers will deprecate all new CosmWasm deployments and disable all legacy CosmWasm contracts and transaction support for non-EVM addresses.

Unsurprisingly, the upgrade will affect all network participants. Infrastructure teams on the network will have to ensure they interact only with EVM APIs, while users will also have to migrate their assets to EVM-compatible wallets by bridging, swapping, or withdrawing their assets.

Developers building on CosmWasm also need to transfer their applications to EVM and integrate EVM-compatible front ends.

So far, mixed reactions have trailed the proposal. Most users believe it is a positive development for Sei. However, developers are concerned about the difficulty of migrating apps and contracts built on Cosmos to EVM, with some projects saying they might quit if the proposal passes.

Others believe there should be a bridge that connects Cosmos to Sei so that builders using Cosmos can retain their stack while enjoying the benefits of EVM.

Sei is up 6% as interest increases

Meanwhile, the SEI token has been up 6.6% in the last 24 hours, hitting $0.21, according to CoinMarketCap. Its positive performance directly results from the general market sentiment that has seen Bitcoin near $100,000.

However, the Sei network has also seen increased user activity and interest. With its pitch as the fastest EVM chain, it has seen its total value locked (TVL) grow, peaking at $515 million in April. According to Artemis data, it is only second to ethereum in net flow over the last 24 hours.

With interest in the network growing, digital assets firm Canary Capital recently filed an S-1 registration for the SEI spot exchange-traded fund with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

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