How Sei Network Has Evolved Since 2023—and What Its Giga Roadmap Actually Changes

Sei Network Has Changed More Than Its Marketing

Sei Network has undergone a substantial technical evolution since its 2023 mainnet launch. The clearest change is its move toward Ethereum-compatible development, followed by a broader effort to rebuild the infrastructure that executes transactions and stores their results.

At launch, Sei described itself as a permissionless Layer 1 designed around the exchange of digital assets. Its original positioning already extended across trading, DeFi, NFTs and gaming, with speed and application responsiveness at the centre of the pitch.

The subsequent story is therefore less about abandoning trading and more about expanding how developers can build around it.

That matters because a blockchain’s usefulness depends on more than how quickly it can process a transaction. Developers need compatible software, users need reliable wallets, and applications need assets and liquidity that people actually want to use.

The First Major Shift: Opening Up to Ethereum Developers

Sei v2 introduced compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, or EVM—the execution environment used by Ethereum-style smart contracts.

Its technical overview describes support for existing EVM contracts, familiar tooling such as MetaMask, optimistic parallel execution and storage improvements through SeiDB. The objective was to reduce the friction involved in bringing applications from other EVM networks to Sei.

For a developer, that compatibility changes the starting point. A team can work with a more familiar environment rather than rebuilding its entire application around a different programming stack.

Compatibility still requires testing. Deployment, infrastructure configuration, security assumptions and application dependencies remain practical considerations.

Sei’s account of the v2 rollout also shows why “launch” can describe several stages. Governance approval was followed by validator upgrades and infrastructure deployment. By July 2024, the project said critical services—including bridges, indexers and multisignature tools—were ready.

A Timeline of the Main Changes

This is a development timeline, not a claim that every element of Giga has been completed.

Native USDC Added a Different Kind of Infrastructure

A fast execution environment alone does not supply the assets needed for lending, payments or trading.

Circle confirmed that native USDC and CCTP V2 became available on Sei on July 24, 2025. Its announcement identified potential uses across financial applications, payments and gaming.

The distinction between native and bridged assets is important. Two tokens can share a dollar reference while relying on different issuance and transfer arrangements. Their names should not be treated as sufficient evidence that they are operationally interchangeable.

Circle’s announcement separately identified native USDC and USDC via Noble, known as USDC.n, and linked to a migration guide.

For applications, that makes asset identification and liquidity migration part of the infrastructure story. For users, it makes checking the network and token address essential when following an official migration process.

Giga Is a Programme of Upgrades, Not a Single Switch

The Giga roadmap addresses several different constraints.

Sei’s technical materials divide the work across execution, storage and consensus. Ares concerns how transactions run. Eidos concerns how data is stored and retrieved. Consensus work concerns how validators agree on the ledger.

These systems must work together. Increasing execution capacity is less useful if storage becomes a bottleneck or nodes cannot reliably maintain the resulting workload.

The initial Giga whitepaper set out ambitions including approximately 200,000 transactions per second and 5 gigagas per second of throughput. Sei Labs co-founder Jay Jog described the effort as:

a reimagining of what’s possible for blockchain performance

Those are project-defined architectural ambitions. They should not be presented as independently verified, continuously achieved mainnet activity.

Transactions also vary in complexity. A simple transfer and a complex contract interaction can consume very different amounts of computation, making headline TPS comparisons incomplete without knowing the workload and test conditions.

What Has Actually Reached Mainnet?

The Eidos update provides a concrete example of the difference between a roadmap and a deployed component.

In its August 12, 2026 post, Sei said the first Eidos phase reached mainnet through v6.6. The update began separating EVM data into dedicated storage, with further database and archival changes scheduled for later releases.

The project described a migration designed to operate while the chain continued producing blocks, rather than requiring a full stop and rebuild.

That is a narrower and more useful statement than saying “Giga is fully live.”

It establishes progress on a specific subsystem. It does not establish completion of every execution, consensus and storage objective associated with the wider programme.

For anyone evaluating Sei, the relevant question is which release delivered which capability—and under what operating conditions.

The EVM Transition Also Creates Migration Work

Sei’s evolution has involved trade-offs for existing users and infrastructure providers.

The January 2026 SIP-3 explanation set out a transition toward an EVM-only chain, including deprecation of CosmWasm and native Cosmos transaction handling. It also described changes affecting IBC connectivity and legacy assets.

That document is a historical roadmap, not sufficient proof that every scheduled change occurred exactly on its original timetable.

Its broader lesson remains relevant: simplifying a network for one development environment can reduce complexity while creating migration obligations elsewhere.

Users holding older asset formats need current, asset-specific guidance. Exchanges and custodians need compatible deposit, withdrawal and staking infrastructure. Application teams need to understand which interfaces remain supported.

Institutional Interest Requires More Than Speed

Sei’s institutional work offers another perspective on its development.

An August 2026 publication described a joint report by Mastercard and the Sei Development Foundation based on more than 40 expert interviews. It examined how financial institutions move from evaluating blockchain infrastructure to production deployment.

The report’s framework considered governance, operational readiness and integration alongside performance.

That distinction is important. Publishing research with an institution does not establish that the institution has moved its core payment operations onto Sei.

Similarly, a tokenized-asset announcement should be checked against actual availability, eligibility and settlement arrangements. Bitnxt’s report on SEI trading through Public and Dinari’s tokenized-stock plans examines those separate developments.

For the settlement implications, our guide to how tokenization could change securities settlement provides additional context.

Bitnxt View: Measure the Next Phase Through Use, Not Just Capacity

Sei’s development shows a sustained effort to broaden its application environment while preserving its emphasis on trading performance.

Our view is that the strongest assessment will combine engineering progress with evidence of useful activity. Relevant measures include application retention, liquidity depth, reliability under load and the resources required to operate a node.

Wallet counts alone cannot establish the number of individual users. A performance target cannot establish customer demand. A financial-product filing cannot establish investment flows.

That last distinction is also relevant to Bitnxt’s coverage of the proposed REX-Osprey SEI staking ETF.

The next stage of Sei’s story will depend on whether its expanding infrastructure supports applications people return to—and whether the network can deliver that experience consistently.