Can the new public chain Somnia lead the era of high-frequency interaction in Web3?

This article will explore the uniqueness and potential of the Somnia public chain from the perspectives of technological innovation and application prospects.

Technical Highlights of Somnia

Somnia has several outstanding technical features:

1. Multi-flow consensus algorithm. The architecture of data chain + consensus chain helps to prevent MEV attacks, reduce redundancy, lower costs, and improve efficiency.

2. An innovative EVM compiler. It implements instruction-level parallel EVM, which can effectively solve congestion issues in high-frequency interaction scenarios.

3. Self-developed IceDB database engine. Significantly improves data read and write speed and network stability.

4. Data compression technology. Optimized data transmission efficiency.

Background Advantages of Somnia

The development team of Somnia comes from Improbable, a multinational technology company established in 2012, with development experience in software, games, and the Web3 metaverse.

In terms of financing, Somnia has secured a total investment of $270 million from well-known institutions including MSquared, a16z, SoftBank, and Mirana.

The Ecological Layout of Somnia

The Somnia testnet has integrated multiple AI/social products, games, NFT projects, and DeFi applications. As of June 2025, the testnet has produced over 100 million blocks, with an average block production time of 0.1 seconds. Nearly 100 million wallet addresses have participated in the testing, with a transaction volume of 26.43 million in the most recent day.

The Uniqueness of Somnia

Although the market has become numb to the concept of "high-speed public chains," Somnia is not merely pursuing technical indicators, but is focused on how to truly serve high-frequency interactive application scenarios with Web3 technology, especially in the fields of gaming and social interaction.

The background advantages of Somnia are expected to play a key role in the integration of Web3 and Web2, providing Web2 users with a seamless gateway into the Web3 world and creating a user experience-centric application ecosystem.

Technical In-Depth Analysis

Multi-Flow Consensus Algorithm

Somnia uses multiple data chains to record transactions, with each data chain being managed by a validator that operates independently from others. The consensus chain is jointly maintained by all validators, responsible for transaction ordering and record referencing.

This design has three major advantages:

1. Helps to prevent MEV. The transaction ordering uses a deterministic pseudo-random function, making it difficult to predict and manipulate.

2. Reduce redundancy. Validators only need to maintain their own data chain and only transmit snapshot information during transmission.

3. Cost reduction and efficiency enhancement. By reducing storage and interaction redundancy, costs are lowered while efficiency is improved.

Instruction-level parallel EVM

To solve the congestion problem of high-frequency related transactions, Somnia has developed a new type of EVM compiler. It can split transactions into multiple instruction sets and process the non-conflicting and independent instruction sets in parallel.

This design has two major advantages over traditional trading-level parallelism:

1. More efficient. Instructions within a single transaction can be executed in parallel, significantly increasing execution speed.

2. Lower cost. No additional hardware is required, and it can be achieved using existing CPU multithreading.

IceDB database engine

IceDB developed by Somnia uses an LSM tree structure, which is different from the commonly used Merkle tree. This brings several benefits:

1. Faster read and write speeds. The average read and write time can reach 15-100 nanoseconds.

2. Fairer Gas fees. Provides a deterministic basis for Gas calculations through performance reports.

3. Higher network stability. Reduced the possibility of data inconsistency between nodes.

Data Compression Technology

Somnia achieves efficient data compression based on the principles of information theory, combined with a multi-stream consensus design, making network transmission more balanced and stable.

Future Outlook

As a team that spans Web2 and Web3, Somnia has the potential to become a bridge connecting the two worlds. It provides the necessary technical foundation for high-frequency interactive applications and is expected to drive Web3 innovations in areas such as gaming and social interactions.

In the future, we may see a new ecosystem that truly integrates the advantages of Web2 and Web3, retaining all the benefits of Web3 while not sacrificing the smooth experience of Web2 applications. Somnia is paving the way for such a future.