Why Appchain Execution Layers Must Be Agnostic to Succeed

Forcing a new VM (e.g., Move, FuelVM) creates massive friction. Developers must rewrite tooling, retrain teams, and abandon a $100B+ EVM ecosystem. This is why EVM-compatible rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism dominate with >80% of L2 TVL.

• Key Benefit 1: Instant access to the largest developer and user base.
• Key Benefit 2: Reuse of battle-tested tooling (Hardhat, Foundry, MetaMask).

These frameworks let you deploy any VM (EVM, SVM, Move) as a rollup or appchain, backed by a shared settlement and data availability layer like Celestia or EigenDA. This is the modular stack in action.

• Key Benefit 1: Choose optimal VM for the app (SVM for high-throughput DeFi, Move for asset-centric logic).
• Key Benefit 2: Inherit security from established ecosystems while maintaining execution sovereignty.

These chains bake multiple first-class VMs into their core protocol. Ethereum's roadmap includes the EVM and eWASM. Berachain natively supports the EVM and Polaris VM (Cosmos SDK). This creates a unified liquidity pool across heterogeneous execution environments.

• Key Benefit 1: Native composability between apps written in different VMs on the same chain.
• Key Benefit 2: Eliminates the bridging overhead and fragmentation of multi-chain VM deployments.

Forcing all apps into the EVM sacrifices performance for compatibility, creating a ceiling for innovation. Agnostic execution unlocks specialized VMs for specific workloads.

• Key Benefit: Enables Move for high-frequency DeFi and Solana VM for low-latency gaming on the same settlement layer.
• Key Benefit: Prevents $100B+ in future TVL from being siloed into incompatible, high-fee environments.

Polygon's Chain Development Kit demonstrates the power of agnostic execution by allowing chains to choose any execution environment (EVM, SVM, Move) while leveraging shared security.

• Key Benefit: Developers choose the optimal VM (e.g., EVM for composability, zkWASM for web apps) without rebuilding the security stack.
• Key Benefit: Creates a modular marketplace for execution, where VMs compete on performance, driving down costs for end-users.

Fuel proves that agnosticism isn't just about VMs, but state models. Its UTXO-based, parallel execution layer can serve as a high-throughput engine for any settlement chain (Ethereum, Celestia, etc.).

• Key Benefit: State-minimal execution allows for ~10,000 TPS theoretical throughput, decoupled from the settlement layer's constraints.
• Key Benefit: Provides a performance escape hatch for rollups and appchains locked into slow, sequential processing.

Arbitrum's Stylus upgrade allows Rust, C++, and other languages to run alongside Solidity, all within the same EVM-compatible chain. It's a bridge strategy for agnosticism.

• Key Benefit: ~10x cheaper compute for performance-critical logic written in Rust, while maintaining full EVM composability.
• Key Benefit: Mitigates the developer brain drain to non-EVM ecosystems by bringing their toolchains to Ethereum L2.

A non-agnostic appchain becomes an island. Cross-chain communication via bridges like LayerZero or Axelar adds latency, cost, and security fragmentation.

• Key Benefit: Agnostic execution layers (e.g., leveraging EigenLayer for shared security) natively settle to universal data layers like Celestia or EigenDA, making interoperability a protocol feature, not a bolt-on.
• Key Benefit: Eliminates the ~60ms + $0.10 bridge tax per cross-chain action, enabling seamless composability across the modular stack.

dYdX's migration from an Ethereum L2 to a Cosmos-based appchain with a custom order book built in CosmWasm is the definitive case study. They rejected one-size-fits-all execution.

• Key Benefit: Achieved sub-second block times and ~2,000 TPS for its specific use case, impossible on a general-purpose EVM chain.
• Key Benefit: Captures 100% of MEV and fees for the protocol and stakers, creating a sustainable economic model tied to performance.

Committing to a single execution environment like a specific EVM L2 SDK creates existential risk. You are bound to its roadmap, its fee market, and its potential failures.\n- Security Model: Your chain inherits the security flaws of its chosen sequencer.\n- Innovation Ceiling: You cannot adopt new VMs (Move, SVM, Fuel) without a full-chain fork.\n- Cost Inflexibility: You are a price-taker, unable to route transactions to cheaper execution layers during congestion.

Decouple state execution from settlement and consensus. Use a shared settlement layer (like Celestia, EigenLayer, or Ethereum) for security, while running execution on specialized, swappable layers.\n- Sovereign Choice: Deploy your app as a rollup on Arbitrum Orbit, a validium on StarkEx, or a custom VM on Eclipse.\n- Performance Isolation: Guarantee ~100ms block times and <$0.01 fees without being affected by other chains' traffic.\n- Future-Proofing: Hot-swap execution clients (e.g., from Geth to Reth) or entire L2 stacks as better tech emerges.

Agnosticism requires a competitive market for proof generation and data availability. This is the core innovation of modular blockchains.\n- DA Layer Competition: Post blocks to Celestia for cost, Avail for throughput, or Ethereum for maximal security.\n- Prover Networks: Source ZK proofs from RiscZero, Succinct, or a decentralized prover network, avoiding single-provider risk.\n- Unified Liquidity: Use intent-based bridges like LayerZero and Axelar to connect your execution layer to universal liquidity pools, regardless of VM.

The leading perp DEX executed the canonical case study. It left a tightly integrated StarkEx validium for a sovereign Cosmos appchain, gaining full control.\n- Control: Owns its sequencer, capturing 100% of MEV and setting its own fee policy.\n- Customization: Built a tailored orderbook matching engine impossible on a shared L2.\n- Trade-off: Assumed the operational burden of validator set management and cross-chain liquidity bridging.

Agnostic execution is useless without standards for cross-VM state comprehension and communication. This is the final frontier.\n- IBC & CCIP: Protocols like IBC (Cosmos) and CCIP (Chainlink) abstract chain-specific logic, enabling generic message passing.\n- WASM & Polyglot VMs: Frameworks like CosmWasm and Artela allow execution layers to support multiple smart contract languages natively.\n- Shared Sequencers: Networks like Astria and Radius provide decentralized sequencing that can batch transactions for multiple, disparate rollups.

The goal is not to find the single 'best' execution layer today, but to architect a system that can seamlessly adopt the best layer of tomorrow.\n- Strategic Flexibility: Your core competitive advantage becomes the ability to pivot your tech stack without a community-splitting hard fork.\n- Risk Distribution: Systemic risk is diversified across independent execution, settlement, and DA providers.\n- Developer Magnet: You attract top talent by offering a platform that isn't technologically dogmatic.