What is Sei (SEI)?

By CMC AI
10 February 2026 08:58PM (UTC+0)
TLDR

Sei (SEI) is a high-performance Layer‑1 blockchain engineered to be the fastest execution layer for decentralized trading and financial applications, combining Ethereum's developer ecosystem with Solana‑grade speed.

  1. Built for trading – It's a specialized blockchain optimized for fast, cheap financial transactions like those on decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

  2. Parallelized EVM – Its core innovation is a parallel execution engine that processes transactions simultaneously, enabling extreme throughput and sub‑second finality.

  3. Institutional‑grade adoption – The network is attracting major financial institutions and real‑world asset (RWA) tokenization, positioning itself as market infrastructure.

Deep Dive

1. Purpose & Value Proposition

Sei was created to solve scalability and latency issues in decentralized finance (DeFi), specifically for trading. Traditional blockchains process transactions sequentially, causing congestion and high fees during peak demand. Sei’s entire architecture is designed to offer the speed and low cost required for a seamless trading experience, aiming to serve as the foundational settlement layer for on‑chain markets.

2. Technology & Architecture

Sei is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)‑compatible blockchain, meaning developers can use familiar Ethereum tools. Its key innovation is parallel processing. By executing transactions simultaneously rather than one after another, Sei achieves high throughput—claims of over 200,000 transactions per second—and rapid block finality under 400 milliseconds. This is powered by upgrades like SeiDB for efficient state storage and the upcoming "Giga" upgrade targeting institutional‑scale performance.

3. Ecosystem & Institutional Adoption

Sei is transitioning from a pure blockchain to market infrastructure. It has secured partnerships with entities like Circle (native USDC), Chainlink, and has been selected for Wyoming's state‑backed stablecoin pilot. Major asset managers like BlackRock and Apollo use Sei for tokenized funds, while a partnership with Xiaomi aims to pre‑install a Sei wallet on millions of smartphones, driving mainstream access.

Conclusion

Sei is fundamentally a high‑speed, EVM‑compatible blockchain built to be the backbone of decentralized trading and institutional finance. How will its focus on regulated real‑world assets and massive consumer reach through hardware partnerships reshape its role in the broader crypto ecosystem?

CMC AI can make mistakes. Not financial advice.