What is Sei (SEI)? – Bitfinex blog

07 Feb What is Sei (SEI)?

Sei stands out as the first parallelized EVM blockchain, merging Ethereum’s leading development framework with Solana’s high performance. Sei prioritizes reliability, security, and high throughput and has been live on the mainnet since August 2023, and claims it has consistently been finalizing blocks at 390ms, making it the fastest layer 1 blockchain.

Recognizing the limitations current Layer 1 blockchains impose on trading apps, such as speed, scalability, and reliability issues, Sei aims to resolve these by offering specialized infrastructure. This infrastructure is built to cater specifically to the needs of trading applications to offer seamless user experiences.

At the core of Sei’s protocol improvements are several features. The Twin-Turbo consensus, for instance, enhances block propagation and transaction ordering. This approach is intended to significantly reduce the time validators take to receive a block, thereby streamlining the consensus process.

Furthermore, Sei introduces advanced parallelization techniques, optimizing both transaction and block processing for maximum efficiency. These features make Sei a potential platform for a wide range of trading-related applications, from decentralized finance (DeFi) to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and gaming. With its ability to process transactions concurrently and its integration of a native price oracle for accurate asset pricing, Sei could revolutionise the trading experience in the web3 space.

The Sei v2 upgrade, proposed by Sei Labs in October 2023, will make it the first parallelized EVM blockchain. This upgrade aims to combine the benefits of Ethereum and Solana, resulting in a hyper-optimized execution layer that benefits from the tooling and mindshare around the EVM. The proposal suggests using optimistic parallelization to support processing more transactions per second.

Sei (SEI)

Sei is an extremely fast and high throughput Layer 1 blockchain, as well as the first parallelized EVM blockchain, serving as a potential scaling approach for the broader Ethereum ecosystem. This blockchain is structured to prioritize reliability, security, and high throughput, which are crucial for the efficient functioning of any kind of DApps built on Sei.

By offering built-in orderbook infrastructure, Sei promises fast execution, deep liquidity, and a fully decentralized matching service.

Addressing the limitations of current Layer 1 and Layer 2 infrastructures, Sei aims to solve the “Exchange Trilemma” faced by exchange apps, which struggle to simultaneously achieve decentralization, scalability, and capital efficiency. Sei’s approach is tailored to cater to the unique requirements of exchange applications, such as speed, throughput, and protection against front-running.

This focus makes Sei an optimal choice for not only traditional trading platforms but also for gaming economies, NFT marketplaces, social trading apps, DeFi, and DEXs. With features like the fast time to finality, built-in parallelization, Twin-Turbo consensus, and automatic order bundling, Sei provides infrastructure that aims to enhance the user experience and performance of trading applications. By concentrating on trading, Sei addresses a core blockchain use case, attracting a wide range of Web3 applications and developers to its ecosystem.

How does Sei Work?

Sei is composed of different software components that all work with each other to support the blockchain. Some of these components are tied to the consensus layer, and others are tied to the execution layer.

Sei introduces the Twin-Turbo consensus mechanism, which is an advanced approach to block propagation and transaction ordering. This mechanism significantly reduces the time validators spend waiting to receive and process blocks. It optimizes the steps involved in the consensus process, including prevote, precommit, and commit phases, leading to quicker finalization of transactions.

Unlike traditional methods where block processing starts after the pre-commit step, Sei initiates an optimistic processing of the first block proposal. This means validators start processing a block as soon as they receive it, writing the candidate state to a cache. If the block is accepted, the cached data is committed; if rejected, the cache is discarded. This approach speeds up transaction processing considerably.

A key feature of Sei is its ability to process transactions in parallel. This is achieved through advanced parallelization in both the DeliverTx and EndBlock phases of block processing. By processing multiple transactions simultaneously, Sei improves its throughput and overall performance.

Sei integrates a native order matching engine within its infrastructure, facilitating efficient and decentralized order matching for trading applications. This engine allows DEXs to deploy their order books at the chain level, offering features like frequent batch auctions and uniform clearing prices to prevent front-running and ensure fair trading.

The matching engine in Sei is designed to be flexible and asset-agnostic, enabling decentralized exchanges to decide how to represent assets. This feature provides versatility in handling different types of trading assets, including tokens and NFTs.

Sei enhances performance through client order bundling and chain-level order bundling. This reduces the latency associated with multiple virtual machine instantiations and improves app throughput.

Sei maintains security and governance standards, ensuring that the blockchain operates reliably and transparently. This includes mechanisms for validators to participate in governance decisions and maintain the integrity of the network.

Sei V2 is set to change the execution layer to support optimistic parallelization and optimized state storage. It will also introduce a new component to support EVM smart contracts. These contracts will benefit from the changes made to consensus and parallelization and will be able to interact with existing Cosmwasm smart contracts.

Why is Sei v2 Unique?

 The specialization behind Sei allows it to efficiently handle the specific requirements of trading platforms, NFT marketplaces, DeFi infrastructure, social or gaming DApps, such as high throughput, low latency, and optimised order book management, which are crucial for a smooth and efficient trading experience.

By implementing parallel transaction processing, Sei aims to dramatically increase transaction throughput. This is essential for trading applications that demand high-performance capabilities to handle large volumes of transactions efficiently.

The infrastructure of Sei is fine-tuned to support the unique needs of decentralised exchanges, such as deep liquidity and rapid execution. This optimization ensures that DEXs built on Sei can offer a competitive trading experience comparable to centralised exchanges. Sei balances scalability with security, ensuring that the platform can handle a high volume of trading activities without compromising the integrity and security of the network.

And there are four major advancements in Sei v2:

1. Backwards compatible EVM:
   Sei integrates Geth to offer full EVM bytecode compatibility, enabling developers to utilize the extensive array of Ethereum tools like MetaMask, Foundry, Remix, and Hardhat. With Sei v2, developers can now deploy audited smart contracts from EVM compatible blockchains without any code modifications, further enhancing the building experience on Sei.
2. Optimistic parallelization:
   Unlike blockchains like Solana that offer optional parallelization. Sei automatically parallelizes smart contracts, eliminating the need for developers to manually handle this process. This approach enables the chain to support parallelization effortlessly, without requiring developers to define any dependencies, streamlining the development experience.
3. SeiDB:
   SeiDB improvements to the storage layer by splitting state commitment and state storage. This division is designed to decrease block processing time and reduce state bloat, facilitating a quicker setup for new full nodes. Moreover, Sei DB prevents state bloat, boosts state read/write performance, and simplifies the synchronization process for running new nodes, enabling them to catch up with the network more efficiently. These enhancements collectively aim to optimize network performance and accessibility.
4. Sei v2:
   Sei v2 enhances interoperability with existing chains, ensuring seamless composability between EVM and other execution environments supported on the platform. This advancement opens up avenues for top developers from the Cosmos ecosystem to collaborate effortlessly with leading Ethereum builders, fostering a unified development environment that leverages the strengths of both platforms.

What is the Sei Ecosystem?

The Sei ecosystem represents a comprehensive and specialised environment built around the Sei blockchain. This ecosystem encompasses various components and stakeholders, each contributing to its unique functionality and appeal.
●  DEXs and NFT marketplaces – At the core of the Sei ecosystem are decentralised exchanges that leverage Sei’s specialised trading infrastructure. These builders benefit from Sei’s high throughput, low latency, and built-in order-matching engine, offering a trading experience that competes with centralised platforms in terms of efficiency and user experience.
●  Highlighting the diversity and ingenuity within the Sei ecosystem, several featured dApps have emerged as trailblazers. Astroport, Compass Wallet, Fin Wallet, and Seiyans lead the charge in redefining decentralized finance (DeFi), trading solutions, and meme community spirit. Pyth, Pallet Exchange, WeBump, Dagora NFT marketplace, and Flipside stand out for their innovative approaches in data provision, asset management, social engagement, and analytics, respectively. These builders are deploying remarkable applications in the Sei ecosystem, showcasing the breadth and depth of possibilities in blockchain and crypto utilities.

●  The Sei ecosystem is continually expanding, with an ever-growing number of developers building within its framework. This not only enriches the ecosystem but also underscores Sei’s commitment to supporting a wide array of blockchain-based solutions and services, reflecting the dynamic and multifaceted nature of the Sei network.

What is the SEI Token?

The SEI token plays a pivotal role within the SEI ecosystem, acting as the fundamental unit of value and utility that interconnects various components and functionalities of the network. Sei operates as a decentralized “Proof of Stake” blockchain, powered by the SEI token. The SEI token serves several functions on the network:

• Network Fees: Pay for transaction fees on the Sei blockchain.
• DPoS Validator Staking: SEI holders have the option to delegate their holdings with validators or stake SEI to run their own validator to secure the network.
• Governance: SEI holders can engage in future governance of the protocol.
• Native Collateral: SEI can be used as native asset liquidity or collateral to applications built on the Sei blockchain.
• Fee markets: Users can pay a tip to validators to get their transactions prioritized, which can be shared with users that are delegating to that validator.
• Trading Fees: SEI can be used as fees for exchanges built on Sei blockchain.

SEI Tokenomics

How to Buy SEI on Bitfinex?

How to buy SEI with crypto

1. Log in to your Bitfinex account or sign up to create one.
2. Go to the Deposit page.
3. In the Cryptocurrencies section, choose the crypto you plan to buy SEI with and generate a deposit address on the Exchange wallet.
4. Send the crypto to the generated deposit address.
5. Once the funds arrive in your wallet, you can trade them for SEI. Learn how to trade on Bitfinex here.

How to buy SEI with fiat

1. Log in to your Bitfinex account or sign up to create one.
2. You need to get full verification to be able to deposit fiat to your Bitfinex account. Learn about different verification levels here.
3. On the Deposit page, under the Bank Wire menu, choose the fiat currency of your deposit. There’s a minimum amount for fiat deposits on Bitfinex; learn more here.
4. Check your Bitfinex registered email for the wire details.
5. Send the funds.
6. Once the funds arrive in your wallet, you can use them to buy SEI.

Also, we have Bitfinex on mobile, so you can easily buy SEI currency while on-the-go. [AppStore] [Google Play]

SEI Community Channels

Website | X (Twitter) | Telegram | Discord | Github