Sei (SEI) is a general-purpose Layer-1 network that combines the best of Ethereum and Solana. Specifically, the developer tooling, mindshare, and network effects of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), with the performance and scalability of high-performance networks like Solana. For a full primer, refer to our Initiation of Coverage report.
Sei launched in August 2023 alongside SEI, its native token that serves functions related to (i) transaction fees, (ii) staking, (iii) rewards, and (iv) governance. Sei V1 was based on the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint Core protocol. The network's built-in features, such as Twin-Turbo Consensus and transaction parallelization, reduce latency and increase throughput.
The Sei V2 upgrade introduced three major upgrades to the network in May 2024: (i) compatibility with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts written in Solidity, (ii) optimistic parallelization, and (iii) a re-architecture of the network’s storage interface with SeiDB.
In the future, Sei plans to launch Giga, an upgrade that aims to include a new EVM client that offers a 50x improvement in throughput. The project’s vision for 2025 features a heavy focus on builders, creators, and contributors, which will help utilize Sei’s technical innovation to drive practical adoption.
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Key MetricsThe category with the highest transaction levels has shifted several times since Sei’s inception. The shift has been from NFTs, which led activity in Sei’s early days and Q1’24, to DeFi activity in Q3’24 upon the launch of Sei V2 and its introduction of EVM compatibility, to gaming activity ramping up in Q4’24. In Q1 2025, Average daily transactions in the gaming sector increased 79.8% to 354,000, surpassing all other categories combined.
GamingSei had a Gaming Diversity score of 8 (i.e., the number of applications making up 90% of the network’s quarterly gaming-related transactions) in Q1’25. In December 2024, Galxe launched the Arcade, a two-month campaign focused on onchain gaming tasks. Two highlights in Sei’s gaming ecosystem have been World of Dypians and Archer Hunter:
Other notable gaming ecosystem highlights include projects like Europe Fantasy League, Hot Spring, FishWar, Quizmatch, Dragon Slither, Seiyara, Piratopia, SpinCity, Cat VS Monsters, Astro Karts, Grand Gangsta City, Dawnshard, and Helium Wars. All-in-all, Sei’s gaming sector has been a major contributor in driving up the network’s average daily active addresses (DAAs) 78.1% QoQ to 311,900 and its average daily transactions up 59% to 639,800.
DeFiDeFi activity on Sei has been steadily growing since the launch of Sei V2. In Q1 2025, TVL (USD) increased 73.7% QoQ to $363.1 million. Despite SEI’s price falling 56.5% QoQ to $0.17, TVL (SEI) rose a much greater 299% to 2.11 billion. This indicates the total amount of assets being utilized in DeFi continues to grow. Sei’s DeFi Diversity score (i.e., the number of protocols making up 90% of a network’s TVL) increased 50% in Q1’25, from 4 to 6, indicating continued diversification as the ecosystem matures. Furthermore, stablecoin market cap (USD) on Sei grew to an all-time high of $178 million by the quarter’s end.
Borrowing & LendingBorrowing and lending activity on Sei has always been dominated by Yei Finance, and still is. Yei continued to grow in Q1’25, as the protocol continued its points program that began on June 17, 2024, as well as token incentives provided by Sei Foundation. While Yei’s partnership with OKX Wallet that offered 8.2 million SEI in incentives expired at the end of 2024, Yei announced a new partnership with Binance Wallet offering 1.3 million SEI in incentives in March 2025. Helped by Yei’s various incentive programs, the protocol ended Q1’25 with a TVL of $192.1 million, up 62.6% QoQ for a total share of 53.2% of Sei’s TVL.
Notably, the following new borrowing and lending protocols emerged in Q1’25:
There was a major shift in market share over spot DEX volume in Q1’25. Average daily DEX volume (USD) on Sei decreased 18% QoQ to $16.1 million, but largely sustained the elevated levels seen in the Q4’24. Sailor led average daily DEX volume (USD) as the incumbents, DragonSwap, Uniswap, and Jellyverse, lost market share.
Sei’s vision for 2025 features a heavy focus on builders, creators, and contributors, which the project hopes will utilize Sei’s technical innovation to drive practical adoption. This deepened commitment to empowering its community was on display in Q1 2025, with SEI incentives being distributed through programs like the Creator Fund, Builders Fund, Sei Street Team, and Sei More Campaign:
SEI’s price decreased 56.5% to $0.17 in Q1 2025. The token’s price fell continually throughout the quarter, reaching a high of $0.47 on Jan. 4 and a low of $0.17 on March 31. Meanwhile, Sei’s quarterly revenue (USD) decreased 78.6% QoQ to $22,500, while quarterly revenue (SEI) decreased by 65.2% QoQ to 77,000.
Due to a circulating supply increase of 16% QoQ to 4.88 billion, SEI’s circulating market cap decreased a lesser 49.5% QoQ to $0.84 billion. However, the token’s circulating market cap rank fell from 66th to 72nd, indicating underperformance of the broader market.
Token SupplyAnnualized inflation decreased 13.8% QoQ from 6.4% to 5.5%. Combined with a 0.2% QoQ decrease in the amount of staked SEI, annualized staking APY stayed flat at 5.1%, resulting in an annualized real yield of negative 0.4% at the end of Q1’25.
SEI’s circulating supply increased 16% QoQ to 4.88 billion due to a mix of token unlocks and staking rewards. In Q1’25, 659 million SEI vested, and the investor and project team allocations are vesting at a rate of 97.8 million SEI per month. Ultimately, SEI tokens will continue to vest until Aug. 14, 2033, and another 659 million is scheduled to vest in Q2’25.
Network AnalysisAverage daily active addresses (DAAs) increased 78.1% to 311,900 in Q1 2025, while daily transactions made by active addresses increased 59% to 639,000. A major uptrend in DAAs and transactions began in mid-November, reaching a peak of 486,760 DAAs and 738,990 transactions on January 10th. While DAAs didn’t surpass this initial peak the rest of Q1’25, transactions exceeded the January peak on March 17, which saw 917,480 transactions. The growth spurt that began in Q4’24 was sustained in Q1’25, with activity at levels much higher than Sei experienced the majority of 2024.
Notably, Sei sees a floor of approximately 4 million daily transactions due to a native price oracle. All validators are required to participate as oracles by sending vote transactions and providing updated price data in every other block. Transactions made by active addresses are indicative of real users on the network, and averaged 13.5% of all transactions on Sei in Q1’25, up 54.1% QoQ from 8.8%.
Average daily returning addresses increased 137.4% QoQ to 230,720, while average daily new addresses rose by a lesser 4.1% QoQ to 81,160. This indicates that new users on Sei dwindled in Q1’25, but many new users from Q4’24 were successfully retained after the new year. Overall, the positive changes in average daily transactions and DAAs show that Sei continued to grow at a rapid pace once again in Q1’25, after the prior quarter saw active addresses increase 895.5% QoQ and transactions increase 258.6%.
StakingIn February 2025, Proposal 95 was passed, increasing the active validator set from 39 to 40. Sei’s total stake (SEI) decreased by 0.2% QoQ to 5.27 billion. Combined with the aforementioned decrease in SEI’s price, total stake (USD) decreased 56.6% QoQ to $0.91 billion. Notably, these metrics include unvested, locked SEI tokens that can be staked to earn liquid rewards.
Copilot Insights: What are the most recent governance proposals or network upgrades on Sei?Liquid StakingBy the end of Q1’25, 203.1 million SEI had been liquid staked, a 23.1% QoQ increase from the 164.9 million SEI that had been liquid staked by the end of Q4’24. Compared to Sei’s total stake (SEI), the liquid staking rate increased for the fifth straight quarter, up from 3.12% to 3.86%.
Silo allows users to stake SEI in return for their liquid staking token, iSEI, which can be redeemed to receive the underlying SEI after a 21-day unbonding period. Liquid staking TVL (SEI) on Silo increased 23.6% QoQ to 202.1 million as it continues to dominate as the only relevant player in Sei’s liquid staking sector.
Notably, in November 2024, Silo introduced the SiloSearcher Library, an open-source tool for building maximal extractable value (MEV) strategy bots. While MEV was possible prior to this, in the month after launch, approximately $125,000 was generated by MEV searchers.
In January 2025, Silo’s parent company, Mevvy, raised a $2.8 million Seed Round led by Multicoin Capital. Mevvy is an MEV searcher execution platform aiming to facilitate efficient, cross-chain MEV strategies. Silo’s 2025 roadmap includes MEV-related features supported by Mevvy.
Technical DevelopmentsIn December 2024, Sei Labs announced Giga, an in-development upgrade that plans to offer a 50x improvement in throughput over other EVM-compatible networks. Specifically, Giga aims to reach a maximum capacity of five gigagas per second. Gigagas is a measure of a blockchain’s computational capacity that replaces the commonly used measure of transactions per second (TPS). However, the anticipated maximum TPS post-Giga is approximately 250,000.
This level of performance will be achieved by revamped execution, consensus, and storage workstreams. Key upgrades include intelligent transaction parallelization that predicts dependencies, the decoupling of consensus over transaction ordering from transaction execution, and the introduction of the first-ever instance of multiple concurrent proposers on an EVM Layer-1 network, allowing multiple validators to propose transactions simultaneously.
In February 2025, Sei achieved 5.4 gigagas per second, approximately 115,000 TPS, and 700 milliseconds (ms) time-to-finality in an internal devnet environment. This was achieved using a validator set of 40 that was distributed across the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
In Q1 2025, Sei experienced an increase in average block times from 438ms to 491ms, a 12.2% QoQ increase. Sei also saw transaction failure rates surge in December and January, to 22.7% and 29.7%, respectively. However, transaction failure rates have since normalized, falling to 12.5% in February and 6.4% in March.
Proposal 93 was passed in February 2025. It updated EIP-1559 parameters that were introduced with the v6.0.0 upgrade in November 2024, including the network’s gas target and maximum upward gas adjustment.
Lastly, in November 2024, Sei Labs and Sei Foundation announced the Sei Research Initiative. The initiative aims to “reimagine the EVM across all layers—storage, consensus, and execution” through open-source research contributions from Sei Labs, Sei Foundation, and the broader industry. Several research reports were published in Q1 2025, such as those on machine learning, ECDSA signature verification, AI agents, collaborative intelligence, MEV, gas fees, and more.
Closing SummarySei saw significant growth within its gaming and DeFi sectors in Q1 2025. Gaming was a major contributor driving network usage, as average daily transactions in the sector increased 79.8% QoQ to 354,000, outpacing all other categories. In DeFi, TVL (USD) increased 73.7% QoQ from $209.1 million to $363.1 million as new protocols like Sailor and Takara Lend launched and quickly gained traction.
The quarter also saw exciting developments from Sei Labs, which achieved 5.4 gigagas per second, approximately 115,000 TPS, and 700 milliseconds time-to-finality in an internal devnet environment. This feat was achieved in pursuit of the Giga upgrade, which aims to offer a 50x improvement in throughput.
Meanwhile, Sei Foundation established Sapien Capital, a $65 million venture fund focused on decentralized science (DeSci). On the community side, Sei continued to incentivize involvement through its Sei More Campaign, Sei Builders Fund, and Sei Creator Fund. Looking forward, users can continue to expect Sei to pursue its vision for 2025 that features a heavy focus on builders, creators, and contributors.
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