Sei is the first and fastest Layer-1 Cosmos blockchain designed explicitly for DeFi trading. Leveraging strategic optimization, it facilitates traders with near-instant access to trade information on trades through its decentralized app.
Unfortunately, the fast-paced growth of DeFi applications presents substantial infrastructure challenges in the blockchain industry. And this situation is further exacerbated by the existing deficiency in interoperability and liquidity, leading to security issues, network failures, and user experiences that leave room for improvement.
Sei aims to address these problems by building the first DeFi-focused Layer-1 blockchain. It comes with a built-in order-matching engine, frequent batch auctioning, and the fastest finality (600 ms) among all chains currently on the market. Dive in further to get an in-depth understanding of SEI. Read on!
What is the Sei Blockchain
The Sei Blockchain is a Layer-1 blockchain explicitly developed for the needs of Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Constructed on the foundational architecture of the Cosmos SDK, it uses an order book as its base layer and employs the consensus mechanism, Tendermint Core. The inclusion of order books enhances market transparency by providing valuable information, such as price, availability, trading depth, and identification of entities behind buy and sell orders.
How Does It Work?
Unlike many existing DeFi applications, which rely on automated market makers, Sei takes a different approach by utilizing on-chain order books to match buy and sell orders at predetermined prices. This distinct functionality enables the creation of DeFi applications that can tap into Sei’s Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) to harness its deep liquidity pool.
With the order book maintained on-chain, Sei effectively optimizes its performance and speed. Furthermore, its implementation on the Cosmos SDK brings additional stability, as each blockchain within the network operates independently, avoiding cascading issues across the ecosystem.
Sei also brings innovative features, such as Intelligent Block Propagation and Optimistic Block Processing. These features deliver sub-second finality and a significant improvement in throughput, essential for efficient trading in the DeFi space.
What Makes It Different From Other Blockchains
Optimization for DeFi
Sei Blockchain is designed exclusively for DeFi, which allows it to perform transactions more quickly and efficiently than many other platforms. It differs from most DeFi platforms that use automated market makers, opting instead to use on-chain order books. This unique approach provides a significant advantage in liquidity access and management.
Front-Running Protection
Sei includes specific features to combat front-running, a significant issue in blockchain trading. Using the Frequent Batch Auctioning technique, Sei bundles transactions into batches within each block, executing all orders at a uniform clearing price simultaneously. This prevents sequence manipulation within a batch from affecting the price, thus protecting market integrity.
Permissioned Nature
Unlike many open blockchains, Sei is a permissioned blockchain. This means that projects must go through a vetting process before being listed on the network. While this could limit the number of projects on the platform, it ensures a more optimized and trustworthy user ecosystem.
How does Sei Compare with other Popular Blockchains?
When comparing the Sei Network to other blockchains, several key factors come into play, including speed, scalability, compatibility, and ecosystem features. Here’s a comparison of Sei Network with other prominent blockchains:
Ethereum
Sei Network offers faster transaction speeds and lower fees compared to the Ethereum network. It achieves this by optimizing its blockchain specifically for DeFi trading, enabling quicker and more efficient execution of transactions. Additionally, Sei Network is compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing seamless integration of existing Ethereum applications.
Cosmos
Sei Network is built on the Cosmos blockchain framework, benefiting from its interoperability features and the ability to connect and communicate with other independent blockchains within the Cosmos ecosystem. This opens up opportunities for cross-chain transactions and collaborations, enhancing the overall functionality and utility of the Sei Network.
Binance Smart Chain (BSC)
While BSC also focuses on DeFi applications, Sei Network stands out with its emphasis on speed and performance. Sei Network is optimized to provide lightning-fast transaction rates, offering users a seamless trading experience with minimal latency. The high-speed nature of Sei Network contributes to the efficient and timely execution of DeFi operations.
Overall, Sei Network distinguishes itself by offering exceptional transaction speeds, compatibility with Ethereum, and a comprehensive suite of features tailored for DeFi trading. By prioritizing user experience, scalability, and interoperability, Sei Network aims to establish itself as a leading player in the blockchain landscape, providing a fast and efficient platform for decentralized finance.
The Sei Ecosystem: An Overview
At its core, the Sei Ecosystem is a complex yet cohesive network of financial services, platforms, and participants, all centered around the Sei Blockchain. It offers an advanced Layer-1 blockchain that uniquely merges an order book with the blockchain, simplifying the process for smart contracts to tap into the pooled liquidity.
The compatibility of the Sei Network with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Cosmwasm means that existing applications developed for Ethereum and Cosmos can function seamlessly within the Sei Ecosystem. This interoperability widens the potential pool of applications and functionalities that can be integrated, enhancing the network’s utility.
The Sei Network is the beating heart of the ecosystem, supplying its partners with top-tier features, streamlined user interfaces, and a high level of stability. It also prioritizes performance, delivering breakneck transaction speeds, a crucial aspect in the fast-paced world of DeFi.
Read more about the Sei Network’s ecosystem in our recent article, “The Sei Ecosystem Overview.”
Why is Sei the Fastest Layer-1
Sei Network has earned the title of the “Fastest Layer-1” thanks to its unique consensus mechanism, infrastructure optimizations, and robust technological underpinnings that significantly enhance transaction speed and throughput.
Innovative Consensus Mechanism
At the heart of Sei’s rapid performance is its Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, renowned for low energy consumption and high transaction throughput. The PoS mechanism contributes to the network’s ability to maintain robust security and decentralization, even while processing a substantial volume of transactions each second.
Optimized Infrastructure and Design
Sei’s infrastructure is meticulously designed to optimize speed and efficiency. It employs a multi-tiered architecture that segregates transaction processing from consensus, leading to improved block propagation times and superior network performance. Sei’s commitment to lightning-fast performance is evident in its promise of a 600ms transaction finality and a staggering capacity of 22,000 orders per second. To provide a comparison, this far outpaces even the fastest existing blockchains like Solana.
Advanced Features and Compatibility
Complementing its speed, Sei also supports advanced features like CosmWasm smart contracts and integration with Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) networks. CosmWasm provides a versatile platform for developers to leverage their Rust programming skills to write secure, efficient smart contracts. Furthermore, smart contracts created on CosmWasm can operate seamlessly across multiple chains using the IBC protocol. This cross-chain operability fosters a more interconnected and efficient blockchain ecosystem.
Sei Network has crafted a robust, high-speed Layer 1 platform by focusing on these areas, making it the fastest blockchain in the current landscape and a preferred choice for DeFi applications.
How Sei is Powering the Future of DeFi as a Decentralized NASDAQ
Sei is envisioned as the decentralized counterpart of NASDAQ, engineered to empower the forthcoming wave of DeFi applications. By fusing Layer-1 technology’s scalability with a shared liquidity model, Sei provides developers with an effortless way to integrate with its underlying order-matching engine, thus bridging the traditional world of finance with the decentralized one.
Order books, an essential feature of NASDAQ, are now being introduced to DeFi through Sei. The following points illuminate what makes Sei unique and how it could potentially power the next generation of DeFi applications:
Scalable Order-Matching Engine: A DeFi First
At the heart of Sei lies a scalable order-matching engine, marking it as the first Layer-1 blockchain protocol designed to form the bedrock for next-gen DeFi applications. As a sector-specific Layer-1, Sei can make deliberate trade-offs, leading to a groundbreaking paradigm in decentralized exchange design. This architecture allows the integration of an order-matching engine directly into the chain, promoting real-time transactions with minimal latency and remarkable throughput.
Shared Liquidity Model: Simplifying DeFi Development
Sei’s shared liquidity model is designed to offer developers an easy-to-use platform for connecting with the order-matching engine and accessing collective liquidity from various applications. This feature negates the concerns of managing order books or liquidity pools, allowing developers to focus on creating complex financial instruments. The shared liquidity model enables rapid product development while taking advantage of built-in price discovery mechanisms and swift execution.
DEX Module: Powering Complex Financial Services
Sei incorporates a DEX module, enabling smart contracts to interact with the order-matching engine effortlessly and establish new markets with custom parameters. This proves invaluable for intricate financial services like margin trading, options trading, synthetic assets, and swaps. The Sei DEX Module allows developers to launch custom market makers that are directly integrated into their smart contracts, facilitating the creation of intricate derivatives without dependency on centralized exchanges or third-party services.
Sei: A Unique Network for Trading-Centric Applications
Sei Network’s primary appeal lies in its trading-centric nature. This focus not only drives a potent network effect but also acts as a beacon for many applications and products within the Web3 ecosystem. From DeFi DEXes and NFT marketplaces to gaming DEXes, a vast array of trading applications can anticipate superior performance on Sei compared to other Layer-1 platforms.
The trading-centric design of Sei creates a substantial gravitational pull, drawing significant applications and products in Web3. This allows emerging Web3 teams to secure their first users by collaborating with various trading apps deployed on Sei. This synergy establishes a self-sustaining ecosystem where traders, investors, and developers are all motivated to participate in the network, thereby contributing to its growth and evolution.
Furthermore, Sei’s compatibility with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Cosmos SDK-based chains offers a straightforward pathway for developers to integrate their existing applications with Sei, providing a versatile and robust platform for the future of decentralized finance.
Why Use Sei Network for Trading
In the world of crypto, exchanging digital assets is one of the most fundamental activities, spanning across DeFi, NFT marketplaces and GameFi. However, despite the clear product-market fit, trading apps have faced a major scaling problem on Layer-1. This is due to the “Exchange Trilemma,” which states that exchanges cannot achieve complete decentralization, scalability, and capital efficiency all at once.
Sei Network is a blockchain platform that has set out to solve this DEX scalability problem. It aims to build the first Layer-1 specialized for trading, optimizing every layer of the stack to provide the best infrastructure for trading apps. By offering a specialized infrastructure for trading apps, Sei can deliver benefits that generic Layer-1s cannot:
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High speed
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Order-Matching Engine
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Twin-turbo consensus
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Front-running protection
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Market-based parallelization
Sei is designed to address the challenges trading apps face regarding scalability, transaction speed, and user experience. With Sei, exchanges and other trading apps can achieve faster block propagation times and better overall network performance, making trading on DEXs faster and more efficient.
Optimal trading experiences heavily rely on abundant liquidity. In the realm of on-chain trading applications, automated market makers (AMMs) have become the norm. This eliminates the necessity for external market makers since either these applications are constructed on blockchains that lack the requisite performance level for order book-based trading or services resort to forking existing applications to fulfill this purpose.
Sei, known for its high-speed trading environment, recognizes the importance of liquidity provision to ensure optimal user experiences in the form of order book-based exchanges, as previously mentioned. In response to this requirement, Sei has taken the initiative to form the “Sei Liquidity Alliance,” a collective of market makers collaborating with prominent projects to establish a robust network. To cater to teams interested in developing applications on Sei but in need of assistance with liquidity provision and market making, the Sei Liquidity Alliance offers support. Those seeking support from the Sei Liquidity Alliance can simply complete the application form to explore the benefits of this collaboration.
How to Stake Sei
Sei Network offers a staking process that enables users to generate passive income by holding and locking their SEI tokens. By staking SEI, users actively contribute to the network’s security and decentralization through transaction validation and block addition to the blockchain. To engage in SEI staking, you need to follow these steps:
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Obtain SEI tokens: You can acquire SEI tokens by utilizing a cryptocurrency exchange that supports SEI trading pairs.
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Select a wallet: You will require a cryptocurrency wallet compatible with SEI tokens.
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Choose a validator: Connect your wallet and peruse the staking dashboard to review the available validators. Validators are responsible for validating transactions and incorporating new blocks into the Sei Network. Select a validator that aligns with your preferences.
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Delegate your SEI tokens: Once you have made your validator selection, delegate your SEI tokens to them. Simply input the desired amount of SEI you wish to delegate and validate the transaction through your wallet.
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Start earning rewards: After successfully delegating your SEI tokens, you will begin earning staking rewards based on the staked SEI amount, the duration of the stake, and the validator’s performance.
Sei Community
The Sei Community stands as an innovative network centered around the dynamic DeFi Layer 1 blockchain. It’s distinguished by two significant facets that promote its growth and unity.
Sei Atlantis Program
This program serves as a platform for individuals to showcase their exceptional skills in content creation, spanning various forms such as articles and artwork. The program welcomes participants without the need for extraordinary accomplishments or feats. To get started, log into Sei Discord, complete the verification process, and obtain the prestigious “Sei-lors” role next to your name on the server. That’s all it takes, and you’re already an esteemed team member.
By joining The Atlantis, you become an integral part of a community-driven endeavor, supporting the project’s development and expansion of the Sei ecosystem. Embrace this chance to make a meaningful impact.
Feel free to discover more details about the ambassador program here.
Governance
Sei Governance is built on a foundation of inclusivity, where every individual can contribute their voice through governance proposals. Initially, these proposals undergo consideration during the deposit period, and once the required minimum deposit is met, they proceed to the voting period. During the deposit period, any individual can contribute to a proposal, ensuring a diverse range of perspectives. To actively engage in Sei governance, users can exercise their voting rights on proposals by following these basic requirements: obtain SEI tokens and delegate them.
Sei governance leverages the voting functionality inherited from the well-established Cosmos gov module. To facilitate user engagement and provide assistance, here are several transaction and query commands that can help navigate the governance process. Additionally, you can find links to comprehensive documentation that offer further in-depth information on Sei governance and its associated functionalities. These resources aim to empower users with the knowledge and tools necessary to participate in the governance of the Sei ecosystem actively.
Sei Team
The Sei Network was co-founded by Jeffrey Feng and Jayendra Jog, two visionaries who spearheaded the project’s inception. Alongside their leadership, the core team of the Sei Network consists of highly skilled professionals with diverse backgrounds and extensive work experience from renowned companies.
The team members possess a wealth of expertise in various domains, such as blockchain technology, finance, software development, and business management. They bring valuable insights and knowledge to the table, allowing the Sei Network to benefit from their collective experience.
As the project continues to evolve, the team remains focused on leveraging their diverse skill sets and experiences to propel the Sei Network to new heights. They are committed to delivering a high-quality platform that fulfills the needs and expectations of the community while maintaining the highest standards of professionalism and innovation.
Conclusion
The Sei Network is paving the way for a new era in DeFi, supporting dApps integration and leveraging the liquidity of the Cosmos ecosystem. The network is rapidly expanding, currently hosting over 100 apps with teams from Solana, Polkadot, Terra, and NEAR building on it. Major industry players, including Multicoin, Delphi, Tangent, Hudson River Trading, and GSR, support it. You can find more information about the Sei ecosystem here.
As a leader in blockchain technology, Sei Network provides top-notch trading experiences and pushes the boundaries of decentralized finance. With a solid commitment to excellence, the Sei Network is shaping the future of DeFi trading and changing how we interact with decentralized applications and financial services.
For any inquiries, you’re welcome to contact our Sei Blockchain Manager on X.
