How to Align Teams Around Non-EVM Adoption

The decision to build on a non-EVM blockchain—such as Solana, Aptos, Cosmos, or Polkadot—often stems from specific technical needs: higher throughput, lower costs, or unique architectural features like parallel execution or customizability. However, the primary challenge is rarely the technology itself; it's aligning your engineering, product, and business teams around a new paradigm. Misalignment can lead to wasted resources, missed deadlines, and internal friction. A successful adoption strategy must address three core areas: establishing a clear technical justification, creating a structured learning plan, and implementing a phased execution roadmap.

Begin by building a shared understanding of the why. Create a formal proposal that quantifies the benefits and acknowledges the costs. For example, a move to Solana might be justified by a need for sub-second finality and transaction costs under $0.001, but must also account for the learning curve of Rust and a different client architecture. Use concrete data: benchmark existing EVM chain performance against the target chain for your specific use case. Involve leads from engineering, product, and DevOps in this evaluation to ensure the business logic—scalability for user growth, cost predictability, access to a new ecosystem—is universally understood and agreed upon.

Next, develop a learning and enablement plan to bridge the knowledge gap. This is not just about sending engineers to documentation. Structure it as a multi-phase process: 1) Foundation Workshops: Host sessions on core concepts (e.g., Solana's Sealevel runtime, Cosmos SDK modules). 2) Guided Prototyping: Build a small, non-critical feature (like a token faucet) on a testnet. 3) Internal Knowledge Base: Use tools like Notion or GitHub Wikis to document patterns, common pitfalls, and internal tooling setups. Encourage contributions from all team members. This transforms the adoption from a top-down mandate into a collaborative skill-building exercise.

Finally, execute with a phased rollout to mitigate risk. Start with a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) that addresses the core technical hypothesis. Follow this with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) on testnet, involving a closed group of users. Use this phase to stress-test your deployment pipeline, monitoring (e.g., using Solana's metrics or Cosmos validator tools), and cross-team workflows. Only then proceed to a gradual mainnet launch, perhaps feature-by-feature. This approach de-risks the project, provides tangible milestones for the team, and creates opportunities for continuous feedback and adjustment, ensuring the entire organization moves forward together.

The decision to build on a non-EVM chain like Solana, Cosmos, or Starknet requires a clear assessment of your team's capabilities and project goals. Unlike forking an EVM-based project, non-EVM adoption often means learning a new programming paradigm, tooling, and runtime environment. Begin by conducting an honest audit of your team's current skills in areas like Rust, Go, Cairo, or the chain's native language. Assess if the architectural benefits—such as higher throughput, lower fees, or novel consensus models—outweigh the retraining and development overhead for your specific application.

Key technical prerequisites include establishing a local development environment for your target chain. For Solana, this means installing the Solana CLI, Anchor framework, and setting up a validator testnet. For a Cosmos app-chain, you'll need Ignite CLI and deep familiarity with the Cosmos SDK and IBC. Ensure your team can run a node, deploy a simple Hello World smart contract, and interact with the chain's RPC. This hands-on technical spike is crucial for validating assumptions about development velocity and identifying potential blockers in the toolchain before committing fully.

Beyond code, assess your operational readiness. Non-EVM ecosystems have different standards for governance, staking, cross-chain communication, and validator selection. For instance, a team moving to a proof-of-stake chain must understand slashing conditions and delegation strategies. You should also evaluate the maturity of the ecosystem's oracle providers (e.g., Pyth on Solana), indexing services, and wallet infrastructure. A lack of these critical components can significantly increase your own development burden and risk.

Finally, create a phased adoption plan. Start with a proof-of-concept or a non-critical module of your application. Use this phase to build internal documentation, establish best practices, and gauge real-world performance. Align the team by setting clear success metrics (e.g., transaction finality time, cost per operation, developer onboarding time) for the POC. This structured, metrics-driven approach transforms the adoption from a speculative leap into a managed technical migration with clear go/no-go decision points.

The first and most critical step in evaluating a non-EVM chain is to move beyond subjective preferences and establish a shared, objective evaluation framework. This framework acts as a scorecard, ensuring all stakeholders—from developers and product managers to security auditors and business leadership—are aligned on what "success" looks like. Without it, discussions can devolve into debates over personal preferences or the latest hype cycle, rather than a structured analysis of what the technology offers your specific project.

Your framework should be built on two core pillars: technical requirements and business/strategic goals. Technical criteria are non-negotiable for your build. This includes the chain's consensus mechanism (e.g., Proof-of-Stake, Proof-of-History), its virtual machine architecture (e.g., SVM, MoveVM, CosmWasm), transaction throughput and finality times, smart contract language support (e.g., Rust, Move, Go), and the maturity of its core tooling (RPC providers, indexers, block explorers). For example, a high-frequency trading dApp will prioritize sub-second finality, while an NFT project might prioritize low, predictable minting costs.

The second pillar addresses business alignment. This involves evaluating the chain's ecosystem vitality—measured by Total Value Locked (TVL), daily active addresses, and the quality of existing dApps—and its long-term roadmap and governance model. Strategic considerations also include the chain's target market (e.g., Solana for consumer apps, Cosmos for app-specific chains) and potential grant or incentive programs for early builders. A clear framework turns a complex decision into a measurable evaluation, providing a defensible rationale for why one chain may be a better fit than another for your project's unique needs.

Begin by mapping the target non-EVM ecosystem's core architecture against your team's current EVM expertise. For a team proficient in Solidity and the EVM stack, moving to a chain like Solana, Aptos, or Cosmos introduces fundamental differences. Key areas to audit include: the programming model (e.g., Solana's Rust-based programs vs. Solidity's stateful contracts), consensus mechanisms (Proof of History, Tendermint BFT), client architecture (validator vs. full node responsibilities), and development tooling (CLIs, local testnets, and SDKs). This creates a concrete inventory of required competencies.

Next, assess your team's current proficiency in these areas. This isn't just about knowing a programming language; it's about understanding the new paradigm. For example, a developer experienced with Solidity's gas optimization must learn resource management in a parallel execution environment like Sui or Aptos, where storage costs are structured differently. Similarly, a DevOps engineer familiar with Geth or Hardhat needs to understand the operational requirements of running a Cosmos validator node or a Solana RPC node. Use surveys, technical interviews, or review past project code to create an honest baseline.

The output of this analysis is a prioritized upskilling roadmap. Gaps typically fall into three categories: foundational knowledge (e.g., Rust or Move language syntax), ecosystem-specific concepts (e.g., Solana's account model, Cosmos IBC), and tooling proficiency (e.g., using the Aptos CLI or CosmJS). Prioritize based on your project's immediate goals: building a simple dApp requires different skills than deploying a new consensus-compatible chain. This roadmap becomes the actionable plan for Step 3: Building Knowledge.

A successful pilot plan moves beyond a simple proof-of-concept by defining success criteria, resource allocation, and a rollback strategy. Start by documenting the specific business or technical problem the non-EVM chain solves, such as lower transaction costs on Solana, parallel execution on Aptos or Sui, or customizability on Cosmos app-chains. This document becomes the single source of truth for your engineering, product, and executive teams, ensuring everyone understands the why and what of the initiative.

Define clear, measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the pilot. These should be technical and business-oriented. Examples include: average transaction cost and finality time, developer velocity measured by time-to-first-smart-contract, wallet connection success rate, and user engagement metrics for a pilot dApp feature. Avoid vague goals like "explore the ecosystem." Use tools like Dune Analytics or Tenderly for on-chain monitoring and Grafana dashboards for infrastructure health to track these KPIs objectively.

Structure the pilot in phased sprints with defined gates. A typical three-phase approach works well: 1) Foundation Sprint (2-3 weeks): Set up tooling (e.g., a local Sui devnet node, Solana CLI), run a hello-world program, and connect a wallet. 2) Core Feature Sprint (3-4 weeks): Build and deploy the minimal viable component, such as a token transfer module on Aptos or a simple AMM pool on a Cosmos SDK chain. 3) Integration & Load Sprint (2-3 weeks): Connect the new component to your existing front-end and simulate user load.

Assign a dedicated, cross-functional pilot team with clear roles. This team should include at least one backend engineer, one smart contract developer (or a developer willing to learn Move or Rust), a DevOps specialist for node/validator management, and a product manager. Protect their time by explicitly defining that their primary OKR is the pilot's success, shielding them from unrelated sprint work. This focus prevents the pilot from becoming a low-priority side project.

Finally, formalize the go/no-go decision process. Based on the KPIs, at the end of the pilot period, the team should present findings to stakeholders. The decision matrix should be clear: e.g., if transaction costs are reduced by >60% and developer feedback scores are above 4/5, proceed to Phase 2 (broader integration). If critical bugs in the chain's tooling are unresolved or performance is below legacy systems, document the learnings and pause. This structured approach turns exploration into a accountable, data-driven business process.

The first technical hurdle in non-EVM adoption is toolchain standardization. Unlike the mature ecosystem around Solidity and Foundry/Hardhat, non-EVM chains like Aptos (Move), Solana (Rust), or Cosmos (CosmWasm) require different compilers, local development environments, and testing frameworks. Teams must agree on a single, supported stack. For a Move-based chain, this means choosing between the official Aptos CLI or the Sui Client for local development, and selecting a framework like the Move Prover for formal verification. Documenting this setup in a shared README or internal wiki is critical for onboarding and reducing configuration drift.

Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines must be rebuilt from the ground up. A standard Ethereum pipeline using Hardhat scripts and Ethers.js will not work. You need to create new GitHub Actions or GitLab CI jobs that install the correct toolchain, run chain-specific tests, and deploy using the correct CLI. For example, a pipeline for a CosmWasm contract on a Cosmos chain would need to: install rustup, compile with cargo wasm, run cargo test, optimize the Wasm binary with cosmwasm/rust-optimizer, and deploy via terrad tx wasm store. Automating these steps prevents manual errors and ensures every merge is production-ready.

Establishing a robust DevOps and monitoring strategy is equally important. You need to decide on infrastructure for nodes or validators. Will the team run its own archival node for the new chain, or use a managed RPC provider like Chainstack or QuickNode? For monitoring, you must integrate with chain-specific explorers and indexers instead of Etherscan. Setting up alerts for contract events, validator health, and transaction success rates using tools like Prometheus and Grafana tailored to the new chain's metrics is essential for maintaining reliability and quickly diagnosing issues in production.

Begin by formalizing your findings into a clear technical proposal. This document should detail the chosen non-EVM chain (e.g., Solana, Cosmos, Aptos), the justification based on your team's specific use case (e.g., high-frequency trading, custom consensus), and a phased migration or development plan. Include a comparative analysis of the development stack—such as Solana's Anchor framework versus Cosmos SDK modules—to set clear expectations for the engineering team. Presenting a structured proposal transforms abstract alignment into an actionable project charter.

Next, initiate a proof-of-concept (PoC) or a small-scale pilot project. Select a non-critical feature or a new microservice to build on the target chain. For example, deploy a simple token program on Solana using anchor or a cross-chain message module with the IBC protocol on Cosmos. The goal is to generate tangible code, identify unforeseen development hurdles, and produce a working artifact that demonstrates feasibility. This hands-on experience is invaluable for validating tooling assumptions and building internal confidence.

With a PoC complete, focus on scaling knowledge through documentation and internal workshops. Create internal guides covering the new chain's core concepts, local development setup, and deployment pipelines. Encourage engineers who worked on the PoC to lead code walkthroughs or "lunch and learn" sessions. This peer-to-peer knowledge transfer is more effective than top-down mandates and helps cultivate your first group of internal subject matter experts who can support broader adoption.

Finally, establish ongoing governance for your multi-chain strategy. Define clear metrics for success beyond deployment, such as transaction throughput, cost efficiency, or developer velocity on the new chain. Schedule regular check-ins to review progress, share learnings with the wider organization, and decide on the next expansion phase. Treat non-EVM adoption not as a one-time project but as a continuous strategic capability, ensuring your team remains agile and competitive in a rapidly evolving blockchain ecosystem.