What is Sei (SEI) crypto?

Sei is a layer 1 blockchain designed for speed, aimed at apps where timing matters, such as trading. It runs smart contracts written for Ethereum, so developers can move existing code to Sei without rewriting it. Its native token is SEI.

What is the Sei blockchain?

Sei Labs launched the Sei mainnet in August 2023. It was built with the Cosmos SDK, a toolkit for building separate blockchains, and was described at launch as optimized for high-speed trading of digital assets.

The network has three main performance features, according to its documentation. Twin Turbo Consensus produces blocks quickly and makes them final. A parallelization engine spreads transactions across several processor cores at once. SeiDB speeds up reading and writing the chain's data. The documentation contrasts its sub-second finality with Ethereum's 12-second blocks.

How does the Sei network EVM work?

The Ethereum Virtual Machine is the software that runs smart contracts on Ethereum. Sei v2, launched in July 2024, added a parallelized version of it to Sei's mainnet. EVM activity soon made up most of the network's use.

In 2025 the community approved a proposal called SIP-3 to make Sei EVM-only. It removes the older Cosmos-style accounts and the CosmWasm smart contract system, so only Ethereum-style addresses can start transactions. Sei Labs said in January 2026 that it expected all the related upgrades to reach mainnet by mid-2026, and it told users to move bridged assets such as ATOM off the chain and swap the bridged USDC.n for native USDC.

One difference from Ethereum is fees. On Ethereum part of each fee is burned. On Sei, all fees go to validators.

What is Sei crypto used for?

Sei's documentation lists high-frequency trading, interactive apps and high-volume social and content platforms as target uses. Trading apps include decentralized exchanges, where users swap tokens directly from their wallets and fast block times can matter.

The SEI token pays for transactions and supports security. Holders can delegate SEI to validators under delegated proof of stake to earn rewards, and on-chain governance can change some network settings, such as gas costs.

What is Sei Giga?

Sei Giga is the project's planned next stage, to be added through upgrades to the live network rather than a new chain. It would let every validator propose blocks at the same time through a new consensus design called Autobahn. Sei says an internal test network passed 5 gigagas per second and targets 200,000 transactions per second on a public testnet, while noting the plans may change. Performance figures like these come from the project itself, and the guide on how to research a crypto project covers how to weigh them.