A Comparison of Blockchain Execution Environments: EVM, Sealevel, MoveVM, Wasm, CairoVM

As blockchains have grown to support the evolving needs of users in recent years, developers have honed their attention toward a modular framework that further breaks down blockchains into the individual tasks for which they are responsible. The main modules that represent these tasks are now commonly referred to as the execution, settlement, consensus, and data availability (DA) layers. By focusing on optimizing these different layers independently, developers aim to ultimately improve the general scalability of blockchains as they exist today, expanding on the concept of modular blockchains popularized in 2022 by the team behind the data availability network Celestia. Incidentally, the Celestia team announced a raise of $55 million on October 19th, underscoring the continued interest in modular blockchain technology among investors, users, and developers alike. 

In this piece, we will discuss the intricacies of the execution layer, reviewing some of the key features that differentiate the major virtual machines (VMs) behind smart contract platforms. Let’s begin with the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM), the most dominant execution environment in use today.