Sei Abandons Cosmos to Fully Embrace EVM: Can the Giga Upgrade Deliver a Breakthrough in Value?

In early April 2026, Sei Network officially completed the final phase of its SIP-3 upgrade. Once renowned for its Cosmos SDK + EVM dual-chain architecture, this high-performance Layer 1 blockchain has now fully exited the Cosmos ecosystem, transforming into a pure EVM blockchain. From the spotlight moment of its mainnet launch in 2023 to the present, where the price has corrected by over 60%, Sei’s bold pivot reflects both the internal logic of technological iteration and the survival anxiety amid intensifying Layer 1 competition.

This article provides a multidimensional analysis of the technical substance of SIP-3, the migration timeline, market reactions, institutional collaborations, and Sei’s competitive landscape with major blockchains like Solana. Ultimately, it seeks to answer a core question: by abandoning its dual-chain identity and going all-in on EVM, how strong are Sei’s chances of winning?

From Dual-Chain to Pure EVM: A Make-or-Break Architectural Streamlining

Sei’s architectural transformation wasn’t an overnight decision. In May 2025, the Sei community approved governance proposal SIP-3, authorizing a long-term plan to shift the network from a Cosmos–EVM dual architecture to a pure EVM chain. After nearly a year of phased implementation, the transition completed all core module deployments in Q1 2026.

SIP-3 was executed in three stages. Version 6.3 went live on testnet in January 2026, migrating all staking functionality to the EVM interface. Version 6.4 was executed in February, officially disabling inbound IBC transfers—Cosmos-native tokens (including ATOM and USDC.n) could no longer bridge into Sei. Version 6.5 launched in March, removing Sei’s native oracle and replacing it with mature external solutions like Chainlink, API3, and Pyth. By early April, all code changes had taken effect on mainnet. According to Sei’s official documentation, after the upgrade, only EVM addresses can initiate transactions, and all Cosmos message handling functions have been removed and marked as deprecated.

The core deployment of SIP-3 was completed by the end of Q1 2026, and as of early April, Sei Network now operates as a pure EVM chain.

Explaining the rationale behind this transformation, Sei Labs co-founder Jay Jog referenced a classic automotive engineering analogy: to make a car faster, you can either add power or reduce weight. To make it truly fast, you need to do both. SIP-3 is about shedding weight, while the Giga upgrade is about boosting power. According to Sei Labs, this migration eliminated hundreds of thousands of lines of Cosmos-related code, significantly reducing protocol maintenance complexity and execution path redundancy.

From an engineering perspective, abandoning the dual-chain architecture means Sei no longer needs to maintain two execution environments. The development team can now focus resources on optimizing EVM performance. The core trade-off here is sacrificing Cosmos ecosystem interoperability for higher execution efficiency and a lower barrier for developer migration.

SIP-3 Timeline and Market Response

During SIP-3’s execution, market reactions were sharply divided. On one hand, the upgrade announcement triggered a short-term price rebound of over 10% for SEI tokens. On the other, on-chain data shows Sei’s total value locked (TVL) dropped about 7.3% during this period, with some liquidity temporarily flowing out as assets migrated from the Cosmos ecosystem.

As of April 7, 2026, according to Gate market data, Sei (SEI) traded at $0.05265 with a 24-hour volume of $296,590, a market cap of $3.6061 million, and a market share of 0.021%. SEI’s price changed -2.50% in the past 24 hours, +2.19% over the past 7 days, -17.84% over the past 30 days, and -63.66% over the past year. The historical high is $1.14, and the all-time low is $0.04847. Circulating supply stands at 6.85B SEI, with both total and max supply at 10B SEI. Market sentiment is rated neutral.

Divergent Narratives: What Is the Market Debating?

Sei’s architectural pivot has sparked two sharply opposing narratives in the market.

The Compromise View: EVM’s Victory, Sei Abandons Differentiation

Critics argue that by leaving the Cosmos ecosystem for EVM, Sei has abandoned its most distinctive differentiator. Cosmos centers on the IBC protocol, prioritizing application chain sovereignty and flexibility, while EVM’s strength lies in Ethereum’s developer network effects and liquidity aggregation. Some observers see Sei’s move as an implicit vote of no confidence in Cosmos’s future. On platforms like Gate Square, users have commented that the dual-chain architecture was supposed to be the selling point—now it’s a compromise. EVM is great, but following the crowd feels uninspired, and abandoning the original dual-chain design so decisively is awkward for its early architects.

The Pragmatic View: Public Chains Should Be Where Developers Are

Supporters emphasize EVM’s now-irreversible dominance in the developer ecosystem—over 90% of decentralized app development happens on EVM-compatible chains. While Sei previously introduced parallelized EVM execution with v2, retaining the Cosmos layer forced developers to learn two paradigms, creating a steep cognitive barrier. By shifting to pure EVM, developers can use standard tools like MetaMask, Hardhat, and Foundry, deploying Solidity contracts without modifications. From this perspective, leaving Cosmos isn’t a compromise but a rational response to market realities.

The Speculative View: Can Technical Upgrades Capture Value?

A more neutral but deeper perspective holds that technical architecture is one thing; value capture is another. Sei currently boasts over 1.4 million daily active addresses—the highest among EVM-compatible chains—but TVL is only about $185 million to $250 million, far below what its user base would suggest. The disconnect between user activity and TVL implies much on-chain activity may be low-value or speculative, with real financial use cases yet to emerge. Whether SIP-3 can change this depends on the pace of the upcoming Giga upgrade and the rollout of institutional-grade applications.

Sei Autobahn Upgrade: The 200,000 TPS Technical Commitment

With SIP-3’s streamlining complete, Sei’s next milestone is the performance-focused Giga upgrade. The Sei Autobahn consensus mechanism is its centerpiece, aiming to boost network throughput to over 200,000 TPS while keeping block finality under 400 milliseconds.

Technically, Sei uses an optimistic parallel execution model, conceptually similar to Solana’s Sealevel mechanism—both allow multiple non-conflicting transactions to execute simultaneously. The difference is that Sei’s parallelization is automatic; developers don’t need to explicitly declare account dependencies as on Solana. According to Sei’s official documentation, Sei EVM’s block time is 400 milliseconds, matching Solana, but its finality (completion within a single block) is much faster than Solana’s 2.5 to 4.5 seconds.

On the developer tooling front, in January 2026, Sei launched a market infrastructure mesh, directly integrating leading EVM infrastructure providers like Alchemy, Infura, and QuickNode into its parallelized blockchain. These providers collectively handle over $100 billion in annual transaction volume, serving top applications like OpenSea and MetaMask. Additionally, embedded wallet integrations from Privy and Dynamic reportedly reduce wallet creation drop-off rates from 70–90% to below 20%.

While the Giga upgrade’s technical roadmap is feasible, the 200,000 TPS target still requires validation under real mainnet load. No independent third-party performance reports have been published yet, so this figure should be viewed as a design goal rather than achieved throughput.

Institutional Narrative: Can RWA Partnerships Anchor Value?

Beyond SIP-3, Sei’s other major narrative centers on its deep push into real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. Since the second half of 2025, Sei has announced partnerships with several leading asset managers.

Through the Securitize platform, BlackRock’s ICS U.S. Dollar Liquidity Fund and the Brevan Howard Macro Fund have been tokenized and deployed on Sei. Apollo Global Management (with about $840 billion AUM as of 2025) issued tokenized ACRED diversified credit funds on Sei via Securitize. Hamilton Lane and others have also deployed compliant tokenized fund products on Sei.

While these partnerships are public, most remain in early stages. On-chain assets under management currently total around $100 million—a pilot scale compared to the partners’ multi-trillion-dollar AUM.

Strategically, the goal is to shift Layer 1 competition from TPS "arms races" to asset-carrying capacity—whoever can custody more real capital and win institutional trust will gain an edge. Unlike Solana’s focus on consumer apps or Sui’s emphasis on architectural innovation, Sei aims to position itself as a settlement layer for institutional assets.

Whether the RWA narrative translates into sustained on-chain economic activity depends on three factors: regulatory clarity, Securitize’s ability to onboard more asset managers, and Sei’s capacity to support institutional-grade high-frequency settlement. All three are still in early validation, with significant uncertainty.

Sei vs. Solana: Divergent Paths or Converging Destinies?

Comparing Sei and Solana is essentially a debate over two EVM compatibility strategies.

Solana’s core advantage is its proven large-scale user ecosystem and mature DeFi application suite. Solana also boasts high daily active addresses, but for EVM compatibility, it relies on third-party solutions like Neon EVM, not native support. Sei, by contrast, offers native EVM plus parallel execution—developers can deploy Solidity contracts directly for near-Solana execution speeds, without compatibility layers.

These technical choices reflect different ecosystem strategies: Solana maintains an independent execution environment (Sealevel + SVM), bridging to EVM liquidity via compatibility layers; Sei fully embraces EVM standards, sacrificing technical uniqueness for a lower developer migration barrier. In the short term, Sei’s path is more likely to attract Ethereum developers; in the long term, Solana’s independence allows for greater protocol-level innovation.

Sei’s official documentation even includes a migration guide for Solana developers moving to Sei EVM, highlighting familiar parallelization and 400 ms block times as key selling points. This suggests Sei doesn’t see Solana as a pure competitor, but as an ecosystem whose developer resources it can attract.

Scenario Analysis: Three Possible Paths for Sei

Scenario 1 | Optimistic Path

The Giga upgrade delivers 200,000 TPS in real mainnet conditions, RWA partnerships scale beyond pilots, and institutional capital flows in steadily. In this scenario, Sei’s user activity advantage (1.4 million daily active addresses) translates into TVL growth and a token price that reflects network activity. Success conditions: No major technical flaws in the upgrade, and at least 3–5 leading asset managers adopt Sei as a primary settlement chain.

Scenario 2 | Baseline Path

The Giga upgrade achieves partial performance goals (e.g., 50,000–100,000 TPS), and RWA partnerships remain stable but expand slowly. Sei secures a place among high-speed EVM chains but struggles to challenge Solana and Ethereum L2s for dominance. TVL grows moderately, and the token price tracks market cycles, with valuations in line with similar projects.

Scenario 3 | Pessimistic Path

The Giga upgrade hits unforeseen technical bottlenecks, or institutional partnerships stall due to regulatory or market challenges. Liquidity lost from Cosmos isn’t offset by new EVM inflows, and network activity declines. In this outcome, SIP-3’s streamlining fails to drive growth, and Sei lacks differentiated competitiveness in the crowded EVM market.

Conclusion

Sei’s decision to abandon Cosmos and fully embrace EVM is one of the most talked-about architectural shifts in the 2026 Layer 1 landscape. Technically, SIP-3’s execution was clear and timely, with the team’s engineering capabilities validated through phased rollouts. From a market perspective, the disconnect between price and user data highlights lingering doubts about value capture. Competitively, Sei has chosen a path distinct from, but not necessarily divergent from, Solana—whether native EVM compatibility and parallel execution efficiency can truly unlock Ethereum’s developer base will be the ultimate test of this bold bet.

For industry observers, Sei’s transformation offers a compelling case study: in a Layer 1 market increasingly focused on compatibility and developer experience, which matters more—technical differentiation or pragmatic ecosystem strategy? The answer may not lie in SIP-3’s code, but in the choices developers and institutions make with their feet over the next 12 to 18 months.