Somnia: An Emerging High-Speed Public Blockchain

This article will explore the emerging public chain Somnia from two perspectives:

1. Why might Somnia be different from other high-speed public chain projects?
2. Is Somnia's claim of "fastest speed, best cost" for its parallel EVM Layer 1 an exaggeration?

Brief Overview

Briefly introduce the highlights and advantages of the Somnia project from three dimensions: technology, background, and ecology.

Technical Highlights of Somnia

• Multi-Flow Consensus Algorithm: Separating the data chain from the consensus chain helps to prevent MEV, reduce redundancy, lower costs, and improve efficiency.
• Innovative EVM Compiler: Achieves instruction-level parallel EVM, addressing performance bottlenecks in high-frequency interaction scenarios.
• Self-developed IceDB database engine: Significantly improves data read and write speed and network stability.
• Data compression technology: improves data transmission efficiency.

The background advantages of Somnia

• The development team comes from Improbable, a company founded in 2012 and headquartered in London, UK, which has developed software, games, and Web3 metaverse products.
• Secured $270 million in investments from renowned institutions such as MSquared, a16z, SoftBank, and Mirana.

The ecological progress of Somnia

• The testnet has onboarded 4 AI/social products, 7 games, 4 NFT projects, and 6 DeFi applications, with several more projects set to launch soon.
• Since its launch in late February 2025, the testnet has produced over 100 million blocks, with an average block time of 0.1 seconds. Nearly 97 million wallet addresses participated in the testing, with a transaction volume of 26.43 million in the last 24 hours.

The uniqueness of Somnia

• Focus on high-frequency interaction scenarios: not only pursuing high speed but also emphasizing application in high-frequency related interaction fields such as gaming and socializing.
• The integration of Web3 and Web2: A unique background helps to provide Web2 users with a seamless entry into Web3, creating a user experience-centered application ecosystem.

Technical In-Depth Analysis

Multi-Flow Consensus Algorithm

Somnia adopts a multi-stream consensus algorithm that separates the data chain and the consensus chain (MULTISTREAM):

• Data chains: Multiple data chains record transaction information separately, with each one being managed by a single validator.
• Consensus Chain: Maintained by all validators, executing consensus and recording transaction references.

Workflow:

1. Validators write transactions into their respective data chains.
2. Regularly synchronize the top data shards of each data chain on the consensus chain.
3. Validators write all data shard collections into the consensus chain.
4. Sort transactions and update status, synchronously write to IceDB database

Advantages:

• Transaction ordering is beneficial for preventing MEV
• Reduce data redundancy, lower costs, and improve efficiency
• Data chain design is tamper-proof

Instruction Level Parallel EVM

To address the congestion issues of high-frequency related transactions, Somnia has developed an innovative EVM compiler:

• Split transactions into multiple instruction sets, supporting the parallel execution of non-conflicting instruction sets.
• Compile EVM bytecode into x86 machine code and utilize CPU multi-threaded parallel execution.
• Enable compiled execution for high-frequency trading, while regular trading still uses interpreted execution.
• Achieve dual advantages between cost and efficiency

IceDB database engine

• Replace the Merkle tree with LSM trees to significantly improve write performance.
• Optimize read and write cache, average read and write time 15-100 nanoseconds
• Generate performance reports to provide a deterministic basis for Gas calculations

Data compression technology

• Achieve high compression based on information volume and frequency distribution theory.
• Stream compression enhances network transmission capabilities
• Use BLS signatures to improve signature transmission and verification speed
• Multi-stream consensus design ensures balanced and stable network transmission

Conclusion

Somnia is based on the integrated background of Web2 and Web3, with many technical innovations: multi-stream consensus algorithm, instruction-level parallel EVM, self-developed database engine, etc. These technological innovations provide a solid foundation for high-frequency interactive applications such as gaming, social networking, and the metaverse.

As the integration of Web3 and Web2 becomes a new trend, Somnia is building a Layer 1 platform as infrastructure for this integration and is continuously promoting ecological development. In the future, we may witness a new ecosystem where Web3 and Web2 truly merge, retaining the ownership advantages of Web3 while not sacrificing the smooth experience of Web2 applications.