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About EVM On Flow

Flow is a secure, performant, highly scalable EVM-equivalent L1. With EVM on Flow all of Flow's native protocol benefits of fast transactions, low costs, and mainstream scalability are available without any code changes. It inherits Flow's multi-node distributed consensus and transaction model. Specifically, EVM on Flow benefits from Flow's horizontally scaled transaction linearization design which has solved proposer builder separation, separation of compute, and settlement – all without sharding.

Seamless Integration for Ethereum Developers​

EVM on Flow is designed to work out-of-the-box with the Ethereum toolchain or other clients, and will run existing Solidity contracts as-is without any code changes. Developers can get their existing applications up and running on day one! With your core application running you can begin to explore how to leverage Flow's powerful feature set for your application. To achieve this will require implementing a minimal transaction script in Cadence, Flow's smart contract language, to integrate Flow features with EVM. This is made possible because EVM transactions are composed and executed within Cadence transactions, enabling novel use-cases and patterns for integration.

Native EVM transactions continue to be supported when using Metamask and other EVM-compatible clients.

Best-In-Class UX​

Account Linking is built on Flow's account abstraction model and enables users to immediately use an app without wallet authentication. On-chain accounts can be created as needed by the application which custodies their use for an anonymous user. At some later point these users may choose to link the custodied account to their self-custodial wallet taking full ownership of the account. EVM apps on Flow can also leverage Account Linking to handle creation of accounts and achieve a similarly smooth onboarding user experience.

Instant Cross-VM Token Transfers​

EVM and Cadence environments both use FLOW token as the gas currency for transactions, sharing a singular token supply across both environments. A few lines Cadence can transfer FLOW tokens in the Cadence environment to EVM, or vice versa. Other fungible and non-fungible tokens can also be seamlessly transferred between environments using the native cross-VM token bridge, taking place instantly in a single atomic transaction

Scalability, Performance and Low Gas Fees​

Flow’s state space is extensible to the petabyte scale and is the reason why Cadence contracts have standardized on storing application data on-chain. This benefit translates directly to EVM on Flow allowing contracts to maintain a full working dataset - including metadata - together with contract logic, all at low gas rates. Flow's state scalability sets the foundations for significant throughput optimization yet to come.

Flow's transaction throughput peaked to 2M daily transactions during 2023 sustaining a similar average transaction volume as Ethereum. Unlike Ethereum, Flow has always operated well under its maximum throughput ceiling which is presently scalable to 5x more transactions with further performance optimizations to come when parallel execution is released.

MEV Resilience​

Since EVM on Flow transactions are composed and executed within a Cadence transaction block production is handled by Flow’s multi-role architecture. The heterogeneity between node roles ensures that visibility into block proposal, assembly, asserting block validity and other correctness checks during the block processing cycle expose only the limited information that a given node type requires to perform its function. These differences in node and consensus design results in strong economic disincentives for collusion because no individual node has full visibility into the state of block processing for the chain. This robust MEV resilience is a significant difference from other EVMs and will help to ensure gas fees are reasonably priced at all times. The impracticality of frontrunning or other attacks improves the user experience by eliminating failed transactions and invisible fees.

Key Advantages​

  • Access New Markets: Easily tap into Flow's user base and unique IPs without any implementation risk
  • Simplified Multi-Chain Experience: Ideal for applications without a multi-chain approach or those wanting to ensure cross-chain compatibility
  • Leverage Flow’s Protocol: Expand EVM capabilities and transcend EVM limitations using Cadence, which offers a powerful new account model, programmable resources, and hybrid ownership
  • No Miner Extractable Value (MEV): Leading to a more fair and secure environment for all participants and minimizing the risk of front running transactions
  • Enhanced Functionality:
    • Compose assets and functionality using a shared world state and Cadence contracts.
    • Conduct multiple contract interactions atomically.
    • Tap in to Capabilities for zero-transfer access (Account Linking).
    • Gas Fees: Transactions are extremely low-cost and denominated in FLOW. see Fees

Learn More and Join the Conversation​

Users and developers are welcome to chat with us in the Flow Discord.

Interested in Partnering or Co-marketing?​

Are you interested in launching an EVM project on Flow or partnering with us? Visit our weekly Flow office hours for discussions on project development and other opportunities for collaboration.

Further Reading and Discussions​

Flow Improvement Proposals (FLIPs)​

Those wishing to understand the technical specifics of how EVM on Flow works we recommend reviewing the following improvement proposals.