The EVM and Non-EVM Conundrum

The Ethereum network has been a trailblazer for crypto. It has created the path for hundreds of other projects whose success stories will not have been possible without Ethereum.

The Ethereum Virtual Machine

The importance of Ethereum isn’t just symbolic. It is practical as well. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the arena where anything today is built. Think of it as the Android OS in a world where Apple does not exist.

There are a lot of reasons why most projects are built using the EVM. Some of these reasons include the fact that Ethereum was a first mover in the industry. It was the first real innovator in an industry just finding its feet, and many others simply followed in its steps.

The EVM created ground rules and protocols that other developers could use to create their own networks and projects. Since creating projects with the EVM was successful, many developers decided to stick with it. They didn't do this because the EVM was flawless, but because many believed that it would be prudent to try to improve on it, not go through the insane stress of creating another network.

EVM's Flaws

In truth, the EVM has no shortage of flaws. Design problems like a lack of inspection and traceability, expensive and slow calls to external smart contracts, and illegible on-chain code that plagues most projects and makes them unsafe today are directly caused by the structure of Solidity, the programming language of the EVM. These flaws directly stem from the rigidity of EVM and the austerity of its bytecode. This austerity means there is a limit to the features and functions that can be built through it, and this limit negatively affects the speed, interoperability, and safety with which projects can be built.

Non-EVM Networks

It is little wonder that other developers decided to abandon EVM networks and use bespoke virtual machines (these are non-EVM networks) that have cleaner and more flexible rules where they could work with safer languages and create more resilient products. Those non-EVM networks include projects like Radix, Solana, and Kava.

These networks are different from EVMs because they do not follow Ethereum’s rules and do not require monitoring from a computation engine for executing smart contracts. These networks have totally different principles and many, like the Radix engine, totally reinvented how engineers built projects and how smart contracts communicated.

In ordinary circumstances, this would be good news because it means a more resilient crypto ecosystem and even more innovation since there are multiple virtual machines to choose from.

The Crypto Market And Problem Of Incompatibility

However, the crypto market is at its best when there is very little hindrance between traders and systems. The problem with these new non-EVM networks is that despite providing a lot of variety and functionality for crypto projects, they cannot properly integrate into the EVM ecosystem of dApps.

The apps built on EVM networks are built with special tools and rules that allow them to interact freely with one another. Sending an asset from one EVM project to another is not a walk in the park, but it is a lot easier than getting assets from one EVM chain to a non-EVM chain.

Asides from that, implementing solutions and projects across EVM chains is easier since they have roughly the same rules and are technically on the same wavelength. Developers prefer developing in EVM-compatible environments because it makes it easier to deploy the same solution on different networks.

Hence, the crypto market is fragmented. There is one part of it – the EVMs– that has almost all of the total value locked and has considerable interoperability amongst its projects. And there is another that is locked away in its own tiny part of the world. The problem of the crypto market is finding a way to unify both ecosystems to make the system even more efficient.

Possible Solutions

Fortunately, this problem has been seeing some exciting solutions. While there is currently no solution that standardizes the smart contract logic between EVM projects and non-EVM ones, there are dApps that at least make it trivial to send assets from one EVM network to another.

One good example of such an app is Symbiosis. The dApp pools together liquidity from different blockchains, regardless of whether they use EVM technology or not. What this means in practice is that users can send assets from an EVM chain to a non-EVM chain with about the same ease that they can send assets from an EVM chain to an EVM chain.

DApps like Symbiosis makes it easy for crypto users to make use of projects in both EVM and non-EVM chains, thereby creating a closer and more resilient market. Currently, Symbiosis has its governance token on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and BNB, and is looking to launch it on zkSync very soon.

This incompatibility problem has spawned other related issues such as a negative network effect (that is, non-EVM chains often don’t have enough products to build a critical mass of users), a high barrier of entry due to unfamiliarity of new frameworks/languages to developers who want to work on other virtual machines, and lack of reach. Ambitious developers would rather deploy across EVM chains because they will have better reach and it is easier to maintain than deploy across just one non-EVM chain, regardless of the initial benefits of that chain. Even if that new chain is safer and easier to work on.

The solution to this problem is not obvious. First of all, the core problem of incompatibility between EVM and non-EVM networks is unlikely to be solved. Even the problem of incompatibility between two different non-EVM networks cannot be solved. However, what developers can do is create projects and tools that make it easier for users to transact across projects on the two (or more) networks. That means projects like Symbiosis must receive more support, and other projects in that mold must also be built.

In any case, the proliferation of such projects may be the only hope that the crypto ecosystem has in creating a robust and complete market that serves users to the best of its capacity.