Somnia Achieves 1 Million Transactions Per Second With New Blockchain Architecture

Somnia, an EVM layer 1 blockchain, has garnered significant attention after announcing a milestone of one million transactions per second (TPS). The project's founder, Paul Thomas, provided detailed insights into this achievement during an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Cointelegraph. Thomas highlighted that Somnia has achieved 500,000 to 800,000 TPS on the public test network and over a million TPS on the devnet. This remarkable performance is attributed to a combination of a new execution engine, a Multistream consensus mechanism, and a high-speed database called IceDB.

In Somnia's architecture, each validator operates its own mini-blockchain, which runs independently at speeds of up to one block every 100 milliseconds. These mini-blockchains can move quickly because they do not require global consensus to create each new block. A separate consensus chain runs concurrently at 20-millisecond intervals, acting as a universal observer that constantly synchronizes the state of all validators. This ensures that when validators add new blocks, they do not conflict with the current global state.

Thomas emphasized the ease of deployment on Somnia, stating, "You deploy code and it just runs and scales. You don’t have to worry about it running on this server and how do I talk between servers?" This simplicity is a result of the team's decision to build a custom database, which involved rewriting the caching algorithm to preemptively place essential data in RAM, minimizing disk access. The team also optimized memory usage by leveraging the power-law distribution of blockchain data, where about 5% of smart contracts account for most calls.

In addition to database optimization, the team implemented data compression techniques inspired by the gaming industry. These methods include novel algorithms based on blockchain data distribution patterns, allowing for specialized compression approaches. Signature batching, using a BLS signature scheme, is another critical compression method that aggregates multiple signatures into one, significantly reducing data size.

With the launch of the mainnet later this year, Thomas believes that Somnia is already fully developer-ready. He expressed excitement about the potential for developers to build decentralized reactive applications that respond instantly to changes in data or state completely onchain. Somnia aims to inspire developers by providing a blockchain that allows them to build things that were previously impossible due to transaction limitations, latency, or cost.

Thomas sees strong potential for Somnia to enhance gameplay and innovation by leveraging onchain data and logic. He cited Improbable and MSquared as key partners, whose metaverse technology is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in onchain-backed applications. He also mentioned the potential for composable games, where substantial logic and data stored on the chain will allow developers to create more games faster, potentially opening up entirely new game genres.

Beyond gaming, Thomas envisions use cases for fully onchain user-generated content platforms and real-time social media apps. He believes that Somnia's architecture can support a wide range of decentralized applications, providing developers with the tools to build innovative and responsive onchain solutions.