Neon Labs plans to support EVM on Solana in early December

Quick Take

  • Neon Labs plans to release its mainnet, an Ethereum virtual machine on Solana, on Dec. 12.
  • The solution will allow developers to port Ethereum-based applications on top of Solana.

Neon Labs plans to deploy an Ethereum-based smart contract layer on the Solana blockchain on Dec. 12.

Known as Neon EVM, the solution aims to bring support for Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) — a mechanism that will allow developers to write Ethereum applications on top of Solana. Over the last few years,  EVM has become the most widely adopted computing standard for developing smart contracts. 

Neon's implementation will be a smart contract platform built on top of Solana that lets developers deploy Ethereum-based applications — something that’s not been possible so far on the network. Solana’s existing smart contract framework is not EVM-compatible. Therefore developing Ethereum apps on Solana isn’t possible. Neon wants to change that by adopting the developer tools and compute layer present on Ethereum, thereby reducing friction for Ethereum developers looking to expand to Solana.

"Ethereum-based projects can, for the first time, tap into the previously inaccessible audience and liquidity of Solana without needing to rewrite their code in Rust," Marina Guryeva, CEO and Founder of Neon Labs, said. As a result, users will now get to enjoy enhanced user experiences on Solana without losing out on Ethereum’s battle-tested dApps," they added.

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Notable Ethereum-based projects — including Aave, Curve, and Sobal — are gearing up for launch on Neon EVM once its mainnet launch goes live.  

Last year, Neon Labs raised $40 million from Jump Capital, IDEO CoLab Ventures and Solana Capital, amongst others.


© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

Vishal Chawla is The Block’s crypto ecosystems editor and has spent over six years covering tech protocols, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Vishal likes to delve deep into blockchain intricacies to ensure readers are well-informed about the continuously evolving crypto landscape. He is also a staunch advocate for rigorous security practices in the space. Before joining The Block, Vishal held positions at IDG ComputerWorld, CIO, and Crypto Briefing. He can be reached on Twitter at @vishal4c and via email at [email protected]

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