Solana Virtual Machine (SVM)

In Solana, every transaction lists in advance the accounts it will read and write. The runtime, known as Sealevel, uses that information to schedule transactions that do not touch the same accounts at the same time, across many CPU cores. Programs are usually written in Rust and compiled to a variant of eBPF bytecode, and they are stateless: data lives in separate accounts that programs own.

Parallel execution is a big part of how Solana reaches high throughput and low fees, and the SVM has become a product of its own. Several projects reuse it outside Solana mainnet, including layer 2 networks that settle to Ethereum or other chains and app-specific SVM chains, attracted by its performance and by Solana's developer tooling. The term is now used in contrast to the EVM, much as "EVM-compatible" describes Ethereum-like chains.

Parallelism has limits: when many transactions compete for the same account, such as a hot trading pair, they must run in sequence. Developers must manage account layouts and rent deposits, and SVM contracts are not portable to EVM chains without rewriting.