Sei rolls out Eidos storage upgrade as Giga targets 200,000 TPS

Sei is replacing its storage layer while the chain stays online, a prerequisite for the 200,000-TPS throughput its Giga roadmap promises.

Sei has begun rolling out its Eidos storage upgrade, rebuilding how the layer-1 network stores on-chain data as Giga targets 200,000 transactions per second.

"Eidos is designed to remove storage constraints that could prevent the network's execution layer from operating at the speeds planned under Giga," Sei said in an Aug. 12 technical update.

The first components reached mainnet through Sei v6.6 during August. EVM state has started moving into a dedicated database, while FlatKV, LtHash, new receipt storage and off-node archival systems are scheduled for later releases. Eidos is the storage component of a three-part architecture overhaul that also includes Autobahn for consensus and Ares for transaction execution.

At 200,000 TPS, the network would write hundreds of thousands of database entries every second, so faster execution would offer limited benefit if the storage layer could not process state changes and transaction history at a comparable rate. The full rollout, including FlatKV and LittDB, arrives through later releases.

FlatKV and LtHash replace Merkle-tree state verification

At the center of Eidos is a change to how Sei maintains and verifies Ethereum Virtual Machine state. Traditional Merkle trees require nodes to recalculate multiple hashes when a value changes, because each update alters the chain of hashes leading to the tree's root. As stored data grows, individual state changes can require additional database work.

Eidos replaces that structure for EVM state with FlatKV, a flat key-value storage system where an individual state change requires a single write. Verification is handled using LtHash, or lattice hashing, which maintains a running fingerprint of the state. Under the design, LtHash updates that fingerprint in constant time — a node removes the contribution of the old value and adds the new one, leaving the work per update unchanged as the state expands.

The technical change ties directly to Giga's performance targets. Sei Labs released its Giga whitepaper in May 2025 with a design targeting 200,000 TPS, 5 gigagas of throughput and finality below 400 milliseconds.

EVM state is also being separated from other data handled by Sei nodes. Before the change, EVM state shared a database with other information on the chain. The new architecture gives EVM state its own dedicated store, preventing historical queries from competing directly with live transaction processing.

Sei also introduced a rebuilt pruning path for removing data nodes no longer need in active storage. The pruning changes reduced one cleanup process from between eight and 18 minutes to roughly five minutes during testing. Nodes that could previously fall hundreds of blocks behind the chain tip remained within about 60 blocks after the change.

Blocks and transaction receipts are being assigned a separate storage engine called LittDB. Sei described blocks and receipts as data written once, repeatedly read, and eventually archived, making their storage requirements different from frequently updated account and contract state. Internal benchmarks put LittDB write throughput above one gigabyte per second while handling about 55,000 point reads per second. A new receipt store sustained more than 150,000 writes per second during multi-hour benchmark tests that included garbage collection. Sei cautioned that the figure measures the storage engine, not blockchain transaction throughput.

Older history moves off active nodes

Eidos also changes how much historical information individual nodes are expected to keep locally. Frequently accessed state and recent chain history will remain on fast local storage, while older historical records move to archival systems built for capacity. Explorers, indexers and users auditing historical transactions will still be able to retrieve the archived information.

Reducing the amount of old data kept on active nodes is intended to prevent historical queries from consuming resources needed for current transactions. Sei said rising storage requirements can otherwise force operators to use faster and more expensive hardware as network throughput increases.

The infrastructure work follows earlier efforts to widen access to Sei's EVM ecosystem. MetaMask added native Sei support in August 2025, letting users access Sei-based applications, swap assets and bridge tokens directly through the wallet. At the time, Sei was processing more than 4.2 million daily transactions and had more than 11 million monthly active users. A separate distribution agreement announced in December 2025 called for Xiaomi to pre-install a Sei wallet on new smartphones sold outside mainland China and the United States, with stablecoin payments using assets such as USDC planned for Hong Kong and the European Union.

For node operators, Sei is carrying out the storage migration without stopping the blockchain. Existing and replacement storage systems operate alongside one another while data moves in batches from block to block. The rollout is controlled through governance and has been designed with a rollback process if problems emerge. Ahead of deployment, shadow nodes replayed mainnet traffic against the new storage systems while integrity hashes were continuously checked. Testing showed block times remained largely unchanged while migration processes operated in the background.

Eidos is the third storage rebuild undertaken by Sei. The network previously replaced its original Cosmos storage architecture with SeiDB, followed by the state-store separation now being introduced on mainnet. FlatKV, LittDB and the off-node archival system will form the next stage as they arrive through later releases.

Users and application developers do not need to take action during the migration, with balances, smart contracts, historical records and existing RPC endpoints remaining available. Node operators have been given a migration guide covering configuration flags and the documented rollback process.

The upgrade positions Sei to compete with other high-throughput layer-1 networks on storage efficiency, a constraint that has historically capped transaction throughput across the sector. If the full Eidos rollout delivers on its benchmarks, Sei's 200,000-TPS target would place it among the fastest EVM-compatible chains, a factor that could draw developers and applications to the network. SEI traded at $0.0386, down 0.5 percent over 24 hours, as of the time of writing.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.