What Is Somnia?

Key Takeaways

Somnia is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain designed for real-time, mass-consumer applications, such as gaming and decentralized social platforms.
Somnia introduces four key innovations: faster smart contract execution, a custom database (IceDB), MultiStream consensus, and advanced data compression.
SOMI is the network’s native token. It’s used to pay for transactions, secure the network through staking, and let users participate in governance decisions.

Somnia is a Layer 1 blockchain designed to support real-time, large-scale applications, including gaming, social platforms, and metaverse environments. The network was developed to overcome the performance limits of existing blockchains, and in testing, the project reported achieving over 1 million transactions per second (TPS) across 100 distributed nodes.
Somnia is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), enabling developers to use existing Ethereum tools and smart contracts without needing major changes. The network’s native token, SOMI, powers the ecosystem by covering transaction fees, enabling staking, rewarding validators, and facilitating governance.

On most blockchains, such as Ethereum, smart contracts are executed in a virtual machine, where each instruction is processed sequentially. In Somnia, contracts can be compiled into optimized machine code, enabling them to run at speeds comparable to native software.
In testing, this method has enabled the processing of millions of token transfers within fractions of a second. Because compilation requires more resources, this process is typically applied to contracts that are called often, while less frequently used contracts still run in the standard way.

A blockchain needs to constantly read and write data, such as balances, contracts, and transaction records. Somnia uses a custom database called IceDB, designed for fast and predictable performance, with operations measured in nanoseconds. Features like built-in snapshotting help the network manage large amounts of information efficiently, even during periods of heavy activity.

Blockchains rely on consensus to agree on the order of transactions. Somnia uses a model called MultiStream consensus, where each validator maintains its own “data chain” of transactions. A separate consensus chain then combines these data chains and organizes them in a secure manner, using a Proof of Stake (PoS) system inspired by Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT).
This separation of roles enables transactions to be processed in parallel across multiple validators, rather than waiting for all validators to work on the same block. The consensus chain ensures that no validator can manipulate its own data chain without detection, maintaining security while increasing throughput.

Processing millions of transactions means a significant amount of data must be transferred between blockchain nodes. To manage this, Somnia applies compression methods and signature aggregation.
By combining many digital signatures into one, verifying a batch of transactions becomes nearly as efficient as verifying a single one. Together with data compression, this approach reduces bandwidth demands, enabling the network to sustain high throughput without overwhelming the system.

Somnia’s goal is to enable Web3 applications to operate with the scale and responsiveness typically associated with Web2 platforms. Its architecture is designed to handle high transaction volumes and fast confirmation times, making it suitable for several types of applications. Some examples include: