What is Sei Network?
Sei is the first Layer 1 specialized for trading, giving exchanges an unfair advantage.
- Optimizing every layer of the stack to give exchanges an unfair advantage
- Backed by Multicoin, Coinbase, Delphi, and a lot of large market makers
- There are already 60+ teams building on top from Solana, Polkadot, NEAR, and Terra
By exploring the new design space between app chains and general purpose L1s, Sei has carefully selected a unique set of tradeoffs that make its layer 1 the optimal environment for trading.
Designed from the bottom up to scale, Sei unlocks new possibilities with optimizations including:
- Built-in orderbook - solves the age-old orderbook scaling issue
- Frontrunning protection - MEV is a major drawback of popular chains like Ethereum and Solana
- Finality - Sei is the fastest chain to finality at ~600ms, 5x faster than Solana, Sui, and 2x faster than Aptos.
Sei goes head to head with Aptos, Sui, Solana, and NEAR for good devs.
Sei’s vision:** Sei serves as an infrastructure for the future financial system — supporting capital markets, starting with exchanges.
What makes Sei unique?
Nearly all Layer 1 chains fall into a barbell distribution with many general-purpose chains on one side (Solana, Aptos, Ethereum) and app-specific chains on the other (dYdX, Osmosis). There is a massive design space in the middle of that distribution and that is where Sei explores.
Sei unlocks an entirely new design space in between the two - not the general purpose nor app-specific but DEX-specific.
What problem does Sei solve?
Exchanges are the greatest killer app of crypto - AMMs, OBs, NFTs, GameFi
Ironically, exchanges are the most underserved application in crypto
Protocols building on Sei
Vortex Protocol is a decentralized derivatives exchange in Cosmos.
Axelar Network is providing bridging services and acting as an interoperability layer for Sei.
Synthr is a synthetic assets protocol that allows users to gain exposure to virtual and real-world assets without owning them.
KYVE
is a decentralized data lake solution that enables anyone to upload and or access validated and permanently stored data in a streamlined manner.
And other like: White Whale, Leap Wallet, UXD, DeFund, Multichain, Skip, Kado, Frontier, Alpha Venture DAO, Coin98, Nitro, Cypher, Kargo, Andromeda Protocol, Paddle, Celer
Team
Sei Labs is comprised of three types of backgrounds:
- Developers from Robinhood, Databricks, Airbnb, etc. with extensive expertise in orderbook design, infrastructure, and the Cosmos stack
- Cosmos OGs who have navigated the ecosystem for years
- Finance and strategy members from Goldman Sachs and other market makers who bridge the gaps between DeFi and institutions
Investors
Sei Network has investors such as Multicoin Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Delphi Ventures.
Sei recently announced a $5m funding round led by Multicoin Capital with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Delphi Digital, Hudson River Trading, GSR, Hypersphere, Flow Traders, Kronos Research and founders Anchorage, Frax, Yield Guild Games and Tangent.
Multicoin Capital
Multicoin Capital is an investment company that invests in cryptocurrencies, tokens and blockchain companies. Cryptocurrencies and companies will create trillions of dollars in value over the next decade. But investing in tokens is fundamentally different from investing in companies. Investing responsibly in this ecosystem requires new tools, heuristics and security measures.
Since the firm was founded in May 2017, Multicoin Capital have gained a reputation for forward-thinking and independent thinking. They are known as pioneers in token economic models, valuation methodologies and challenging long-standing assumptions that the crypto ecosystem takes for granted.
Cryptocurrencies are the first inherently global asset class, and the team covers activity around the world.
It is therefore not surprising that they have inveighed in Sei.
Coinbase Ventures
Coinbase Ventures invests in exceptional founders who share Coinbase's mission to create greater economic freedom for the world.
Founded in 2018, Coinbase Ventures is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California. The firm is the corporate venture capital arm of Coinbase, Inc. The firm seeks to invest in early-stage cryptocurrency and blockchain technology companies.
Coinbase Ventures is one of the most active corporate venture capital funds dedicated to increasing economic freedom worldwide by supporting leading entrepreneurs and projects in the ecosystem. Ultimately, we see cryptocurrency and Web3 as the tide that lifts all boats, including Coinbase, and Coinbase Ventures is engaged in investments that are critical to the overall growth of this space.
Delphi Ventures
Delphi Ventures is a venture capital and private equity firm. It invests in life sciences and biotechnology companies. Its main focus is the development of medical devices and pharmaceuticals.
James Bochnowski founded Delphi Ventures in 1988 in Menlo Park, California. Its portfolio includes AEGEA Medical, Cardeas Pharma, EBR Systems, Ivantis, Senseonics, Sotera Wireless, ForSight VISION5, Sequent Medical, Tandem Diabetes Care, Labcyte, Calithera Biosciences, Breathe Technologies, PTC Therapeutics, Alder Biopharmaceuticals, Karyopharm Therapeutics, Astute Medical, Relypsa and OncoMed Pharmaceuticals.
Delphi Ventures typically focuses on collaborative task development, evaluation of information and interviews with critical personnel, providing long-term monetary and intellectual capital for promising tasks in the cryptocurrency market. It can be seen that the fund actively participates in and accompanies the task, focusing on long-term growth instead of aiming for short-term income only.
A little about the host company: Delphi Digital is a primary search venture for people and organisations. They develop their market strategy using dynamic and multidisciplinary approaches that combine traditional pricing solutions and financial rules with ideas defined for decentralised methods.
DEX Optimizations
Technical Breakthroughs
- Optimistic block processing: heavily decreases block latency
- Native order matching engine: driving scalability for orderbook DEXs on Sei
- Overloading consensus: Sei is the fastest chain to finality at 600ms
- DeFi-specific parallelization: massively increases throughput and order processing
- Intelligent block propagation: Improves latency and throughput
- Sub-second settlement: Sei is the fastest chain to finality (600ms) - 5x Solana, Sui, and 2x Aptos
Frontrunning Prevention
- Sub-second settlement: Sei is the fastest chain to finality (600ms) - 5x Solana, Sui, and 2x Aptos
- Frequent batch auctioning: rather than executing each order one by one (as would happen on Ethereum or Solana). Sei can aggregate every order together at the end of the block and execute all market orders at the same price to help prevent frontrunning
Developer and User Experience
- Native price oracles: built into the chain itself for high-quality and reliable data feeds
- Single block order execution: on Serum, apps need 1 transaction to place an order (adding it to a queue) and then another transaction (in another block) to “turn the crank” for order execution. Sei collapses that into 1 block for faster order execution.
- Multiple levels of order bundling: to minimize gas costs so market makers and pro traders on apps built on Sei can submit 1 transaction to update multiple markets
Why Cosmos
- Customizable: enables Sei to design the entire end-to-end blockchain flow such as aggregating orders at the end of the block to uniquely unlock orderbook apps built on Sei
- Modular: Cosmos SDK gives teams a platform for consensus and application layers to work together and allows for updating or replacing any individual layer of the stack
What other chains can’t do?
- Frontrunning prevention: Frequent batch auctioning
- Automatic order batching: Update multiple markets in one transaction
- Efficient computation bundling: Reduce VM initialization costs