Why the EVM is Becoming a Scaling Liability

The EVM's single-threaded design forces all transactions into a sequential queue, capping throughput at the hardware limit of a single core. This is the root cause of network congestion and high fees during peak demand.

• Parallel Execution is impossible, unlike on Sui or Aptos.
• Gas fees become a direct tax on network usage, not just security.
• Limits complex DeFi interactions that require multiple contract calls.

EVM's global state model requires every node to store and compute over the entire chain history. Gas costs for storage are a crude, user-paid tax to slow this growth, making applications like fully on-chain games economically unviable.

• State bloat forces centralization of node operators.
• Stateless clients and witnesses are complex workarounds, not solutions.
• Contrast with Fuel's UTXO model or Celestia's data availability separation.

EVM compatibility chains are locked into Solidity's tooling and security model. This creates a monoculture where vulnerabilities like reentrancy are systemic, and advanced language features (formal verification, native assets) are nearly impossible to integrate.

• Limits adoption of safer languages like Move (used by Aptos, Sui) or Rust.
• Hinders novel VM designs like FuelVM's predicate system or CosmWasm's capability-based security.
• Innovation becomes fork-driven, not fundamental.

The EVM stack bundles execution, settlement, consensus, and data availability. Modern architectures like Celestia, EigenDA, and Avail decouple these layers, allowing execution environments (rollups) to specialize. EVM chains must either fracture their own stack or become a legacy settlement layer.

• Rollups (Arbitrum, Optimism) are already outsourcing data and proving.
• Pure execution layers like Fuel and Eclipse can achieve 10,000+ TPS.
• EVM's monolithic design is its biggest scaling constraint.

EVM's sequential, single-threaded runtime cannot process transactions in parallel, capping throughput at the physical limit of a single CPU core. This is the root cause of L2 congestion and fee spikes.

• Architectural Ceiling: ~100-200 TPS per core, regardless of L2 design.
• Real Impact: Arbitrum and Optimism still see gas fees spike to $1+ during mempool floods.

Every EVM operation is priced for 256-bit arithmetic, a legacy from Ethereum's original design. This creates massive inefficiency for modern applications that primarily use 64-bit or 32-bit computations.

• Cost Bloat: Paying for 256-bit ops where 64-bit suffices.
• Competitive Disadvantage: Native chains like Solana and Sui avoid this tax entirely, enabling ~$0.001 microtransactions.

The EVM's global, monolithic state model forces every node to store and compute everything. This creates unsustainable hardware requirements and limits horizontal scaling, unlike modular designs (Celestia, EigenDA) or parallelized states (Aptos, Fuel).

• Scaling Wall: State growth outpaces hardware (see Ethereum's ~1TB+ archive node).
• Modular Escape: Rollups are forced to become sovereign or use alt-VMs (Solana VM, Move) to break free.

EVM compatibility is a developer convenience, not a scaling solution. Cross-chain messaging (LayerZero, Wormhole) and intents (UniswapX, Across) must route around the EVM's core limitations, adding latency, complexity, and new trust assumptions.

• Latency Tax: "EVM-equivalence" adds layers of bridging latency (~10-20 mins for optimistic proofs).
• Fragmentation: The multi-L2 future is a patchwork of isolated EVM states, defeating the "world computer" vision.