Author: Three Sigma

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

In the evolving blockchain space, instant transactions are becoming a necessity, not a luxury. As decentralized financial applications, payments, gaming, and high-frequency trading push the limits of traditional blockchain capabilities, the need for real-time performance has never been greater. In the race to redefine transaction speed and scalability are MegaETH, Monad, and Hyperliquid.

As mentioned in past articles, MegaETH is an emerging L2 solution designed to prioritize real-time performance, which has attracted market attention with its promise of near-instant block times and high transaction throughput.

However, Hyperliquid and Monad are making the competition more intense with their unique approaches to optimizing blockchain performance. This article will dive into the benefits, architectures, and trade-offs of these solutions to sort out who might be ahead in the race for instant blockchain transactions.

MegaETH

MegaETH is a L2 scaling solution designed specifically for Ethereum. MegaETH is unique in that it focuses on real-time blockchain performance, providing ultra-low latency and scalability for applications that require instant responses.

Key Takeaways

• Latency and speed: MegaETH block times are between 1 and 10 milliseconds and can process 100,000 transactions per second (TPS).
• Dedicated Nodes: MegaETH uses a sorter-centric model that assigns specialized roles to nodes (sorters, validators, and full nodes), streamlining execution and reducing redundancy.
• Integration with EigenDA: MegaETH leverages EigenDA for data availability, allowing it to scale without compromising reliability or performance.

Advantages

MegaETH’s architecture is designed for speed and efficiency, making it stand out in the competitive L2 space:

• Low latency: Its near-instant transaction processing is ideal for high-frequency trading, gaming, and payment systems.
• Scalability: By processing blocks in milliseconds, MegaETH avoids the congestion issues that often plague other L2s during peak demand.
• EVM compatibility: Fully compatible with the Ethereum ecosystem, enabling seamless integration with existing dApps while maintaining security.

Hyperliquid

While MegaETH is focused on real-time performance, it faces stiff competition from Hyperliquid and Monad, two platforms that take different approaches to optimizing blockchain transactions.

Hyperliquid is a fully on-chain perpetual trading protocol built on its own L1 blockchain, optimized for low latency and high throughput. By integrating spot, derivatives, and pre-release markets into its platform, Hyperliquid introduces the high-performance consensus mechanism HyperBFT and HyperEVM plans, aiming to expand its ecosystem through efficient liquidity aggregation.

• Vision: Hyperliquid is focused on redefining the trading experience by providing a high-speed, decentralized market infrastructure that is highly attractive to financial institutions and high-volume traders.
• Market Specialization: Its unique combination of spot and perpetual markets enables seamless liquidity aggregation and fast settlement.

Hyperliquid's stack includes a wider range of financial primitives such as lending, governance, and native stablecoins. Built on its HyperBFT consensus, Hyperliquid achieves a 0.2 second block time while maintaining a unified state across all components, ensuring performance, liquidity, and programmability. With over 262,000 users and processing 200,000 transactions per second, Hyperliquid positions itself as a leader in decentralized market infrastructure.

To further expand its influence, Hyperliquid provides Builder Codes, a feature that allows other dApps and CEXs to seamlessly integrate its liquidity by paying fees on a per-transaction basis. Builder Codes not only expands Hyperliquid’s reach, but also incentivizes external platforms to leverage its high-performance trading infrastructure, enhance liquidity, and expand its network effect.

Monad

Monad redesigns the EVM architecture to achieve high throughput through parallel execution. By addressing the limitations of Ethereum's sequential transaction processing, Monad unlocks new levels of efficiency and scalability.

• Vision: Monad aims to provide cutting-edge blockchain performance while preserving decentralization, setting a new standard for L1 scalability.
• Parallel Execution: Monad’s architecture supports concurrent processing of transactions across multiple EVM instances, ensuring seamless integration with existing user and developer workflows.
• Full compatibility: Monad ensures bytecode EVM compatibility and Ethereum RPC compatibility, integrating state-of-the-art internal optimizations without changing the development experience.

Monad introduces pipelining to optimize transaction execution, consensus processes, and state synchronization to maximize hardware efficiency and minimize latency. Using the custom MonadBFT consensus mechanism derived from HotStuff, the protocol supports a strong and decentralized validator set while achieving fast block finality.

Key innovations include MonadDB, a purpose-built database tailored for Ethereum state access, and Optimistic parallel execution, which ensures high throughput with minimal overhead. Monad further enhances scalability by separating the consensus and execution layers, enabling developers to build applications that require both exceptional performance and low latency.

Monad’s groundbreaking advancements make it a powerful platform for enterprise-grade applications, providing developers with the tools to create high-throughput dApps while maintaining Ethereum compatibility and embracing the future of blockchain innovation.

contrast

By evaluating the key metrics of MegaETH, Hyperliquid, and Monad, we can fully understand the unique advantages and trade-offs of each. This comparison focuses on latency, throughput (TPS), EVM compatibility, use cases, finality time (TTF), and decentralization trade-offs. These attributes highlight the fundamental requirements for scaling blockchain infrastructure while ensuring practical utility and performance.

Latency:

• MegaETH excels at ultra-low latency (1-10 ms) for L2 transactions, making it suitable for applications that require near-instant responses, such as high-frequency trading or competitive gaming.
• Hyperliquid’s sub-second latency is optimized for financial markets, enabling fast order execution and a seamless trading experience.
• Monad's parallel low-latency execution ensures stability even under heavy network load, supporting a variety of dApps.

Throughput ( TPS ):

• MegaETH throughput exceeds 100,000 TPS, emphasizing the scalability of large-scale applications
• Hyperliquid uses its proprietary HyperBFT consensus and L1 optimization to achieve 200,000 TPS
• Monad has a maximum TPS of 10,000 and focuses on balancing high performance and decentralization.

EVM Compatibility:

• MegaETH’s full EVM compatibility ensures seamless integration for developers and existing dApps
• Hyperliquid integrates HyperEVM, a customized version for financial market use cases
• Monad's redesigned EVM supports high-performance execution while maintaining compatibility with Ethereum tools and standards.

Use Cases:

• MegaETH targets games, transactions, and payment systems, emphasizing real-time interaction and high scalability
• Hyperliquid focuses on financial markets, providing infrastructure for derivatives, spot trading and market making
• Monad’s versatility supports a wide variety of dapps, especially those that require high throughput and low latency

Time to Finalization (TTF) :

• MegaETH L2 transactions achieve near-instant finality (10 milliseconds), but full settlement on Ethereum L1 takes about 7 days
• Hyperliquid's 1-2 second TTF strikes a balance between low latency and consensus mechanism
• Monad completes transactions in under 1 second, providing a practical combination of speed and security

Decentralization trade-offs:

• MegaETH’s centralized sorter design sacrifices some decentralization to achieve L2 real-time performance
• Hyperliquid’s market-centric architecture prioritizes low latency and high throughput over decentralization
• Monads are designed to maintain a balance, using parallel execution and lazy state updates to optimize performance and decentralization.

in conclusion

MegaETH, Hyperliquid, and Monad each bring unique innovations to the blockchain ecosystem and meet different needs:

• MegaETH: excels in latency and TPS, making it ideal for real-time applications, but raises questions about decentralization due to its centralized sorter design
• Hyperliquid: Wins in financial markets with its HyperEVM and liquidity integration, but not as versatile as MegaETH in other dApp categories
• Monad: strikes a balance between decentralization and performance, leveraging parallel execution to increase TPS and support a variety of applications

Which of the three leads? Depends on the use case:

• In terms of trading and liquidity, Hyperliquid is a strong competitor with its focus on the financial sector
• For general dApp scalability, MegaETH is leading with its real-time performance and wider application scope.
• For decentralized, high-throughput applications, Monad’s parallelized EVM provides a better choice for developers who prioritize decentralization.

Key observations:

• MegaETH's tradeoffs: By sacrificing decentralization, MegaETH achieves unparalleled speed, making it extremely attractive for real-time systems such as transactions and games. While MegaETH relies on Ethereum L1 for settlement (ensuring trust and security), it inherits Ethereum's finality delay. In contrast, Monad and Hyperliquid achieve faster native finality through their independent consensus mechanisms, prioritizing instant performance but sacrificing Ethereum's shared security guarantees.
• Hyperliquid's Specialization: Hyperliquid stands out in the financial markets for its speed, liquidity aggregation, and seamless trading infrastructure. However, its focus on trading limits its versatility in the broader dApp ecosystem, making it less attractive for general-purpose applications. In addition, its centralized HyperBFT consensus raises concerns about decentralization and trust, and relies heavily on external liquidity to maintain its performance and ecosystem growth.
• Monad's Balance: Monad strikes a balance between scalability and decentralization through its parallel execution model, providing developers with high throughput without compromising EVM compatibility. However, its reliance on hardware (e.g., 32 GB RAM, high bandwidth) limits accessibility to small operators, potentially centralizing the network. Its independent L1 consensus provides autonomy but sacrifices Ethereum's security guarantees, which may hinder developers who prioritize trust and shared security.

The competition between MegaETH, Hyperliquid, and Monad highlights a key aspect of blockchain development: no single solution currently dominates all use cases. Each platform excels in its field, offering a unique value proposition that meets different needs. For developers and enterprises, the decision often comes down to specific application requirements, whether it is speed, market liquidity, or decentralized scalability.

These projects also highlight the importance of continued innovation in blockchain infrastructure. As adoption grows, the industry must reconcile the scalability trilemma with user expectations for low fees, high performance, and strong security. Collaborative advances, such as integrating solutions from different ecosystems, may drive the next wave of blockchain breakthroughs. As blockchain technology evolves, these platforms push the boundaries of what is possible, paving the way for faster, scalable, and efficient decentralized systems.

Which one is ultimately chosen depends on the priorities of developers and users: speed, decentralization, or specialization.

Related reading: The battle for high-performance public chains: Comparison and future prospects of MegaETH and Monad