How Sei and Aptos Are Attempting to Become the Ethereum-Killer Killers

As Solana has enjoyed a 20X from the crypto winter of 2022 by challenging Ethereum with faster transaction speeds, a new swath of "Ethereum Killer-Killers" have popped up to steal the show.

Looking to outmaneuver Solana by offering even faster speeds while also maintaining Ethereum operability, chains like Sei and Aptos have stepped to the forefront. In this article, we're profiling both as part of our Crypto Project of the Year celebration of the top projects in crypto.

It’s been quite the year for Sei as the blockchain rewrites the rules on speed and scalability. As Jay Jog, co-founder of Sei Labs, explained during his debut appearance on Coinage, the blockchain is not just another addition to the crowded layer-1 space — it’s aiming to revolutionize it. With the launch of its parallelized Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Sei is delivering a level of performance that even the most ambitious developers could only dream of a few years ago.

“The EVM is definitely here to stay,” Jog asserted, underscoring a core tenet of Sei’s mission. As the industry-standard execution environment, the EVM’s versatility has made it the backbone of blockchain development. But for all its utility, Ethereum’s EVM — and by extension, those who rely on it — has faced critical limitations in throughput. With Ethereum struggling to break 50 transactions per second (TPS), it’s no surprise developers and users alike have felt constrained.

“That has significant limitations, both from the user experience and from the developer experience. So from the user experience, it's really clunky because now you end up having to pay super high gas fees," Jog explained, citing Ethereum’s 2024 gas price spikes to over 100 gwei, which priced many potential users out of the ecosystem. Developers, too, have been forced into creative but inefficient workarounds to build within the EVM’s confines.

But Sei, the first blockchain to deliver a parallelized EVM designed to leverage modern hardware and process multiple transactions simultaneously, has already made great strides to change that. By optimizing for parallel processing, Sei boasts a 100x improvement in throughput over traditional EVMs, enabling developers to build applications with unprecedented complexity and scale.

"Our phones, for example, laptops that we use, all of them have multiple cores and they're able to process multiple work streams at the same time," Jog said. "So by doing this, we're able to really get 100X improvement in throughput and be able to offer completely new design space for developers."

The timing couldn’t be better. While Ethereum has arguably been lost in a year of Layer-2 exploration, projects like Sei, Sui, and Aptos have gained traction as alternative Layer-1 blockchains. Both Sui and Aptos have enjoyed a strong year, leveraging their shared roots from the former Facebook blockchain endeavors. Sui, is up nearly 500% this year, while Aptos is up 86% over the same time frame.

Sei, however, has set itself apart by embracing EVM compatibility while focusing on speed — a combination Jog describes as merging “the ethos of Ethereum and the performance of Solana.”

Since the launch of Sei V2 in July, the blockchain has seen metrics surge across the board. Daily active users have grown exponentially, with a pipeline of new applications ready to deploy. Notably, Sei has found early success in two of crypto’s most promising verticals: decentralized finance (DeFi) and gaming.

"I think there's only two types of applications that are found product market fit. The first is stablecoins for payments and the second is exchanges," Jog said, adding that Sei’s infrastructure makes it particularly well-suited to support the next wave of applications. In Q3 alone, Sei’s total value locked (TVL) skyrocketed by over 250%, driven by protocols like DragonSwap and Yei Finance. But the real game-changer may come from the gaming sector, where Sei’s throughput advantage offers developers the ability to integrate on-chain elements seamlessly.

Aptos, to its credit, has similarly enjoyed successes on both fronts as well. The blockchain even garnered enough respect from BlackRock for the TradFi giant to roll out support for its BUIDL fund to Aptos as well — joining the likes of Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism and Polygon.

Still, Sei faces the same challenge every blockchain must overcome: the need for a killer app. Jog pointed to examples like Uniswap on Ethereum and Serum on Solana as benchmarks, highlighting how one breakout project can solidify a blockchain’s position in the market.

As Sei looks ahead to 2025, the focus remains on scaling adoption and delivering value to its growing community. With its $50 million Japan Ecosystem Fund and $10 million Sei Creator Fund, the foundation is actively supporting developers and creators across DeFi, NFTs, and gaming.

Jog remains confident in Sei’s trajectory, calling 2024 the year Sei proved its promise and 2025 the year it will realize its potential. “I think 2025 is the year where everyone comes back to crypto, and I think we're going to start seeing activity similar to 2021 again, where there's a lot of new entrants [and] lots of new projects being experimented on."

Coinage NFT holders can vote now in our Snapshot vote to advance Sei or Aptos to the next round. Voting closes December 9, mint a Coinage NFT now to have your voice heard!