Sei launches Giga upgrade targeting 200,000 TPS as Eidos hits mainnet

Sei Network's Giga upgrade targets 200,000 TPS as Eidos storage goes live on mainnet.

Sei Labs published the Giga roadmap in late May 2026, describing the program as a full rebuild of the chain's consensus, execution, and storage layers rather than a tuning pass on the existing system.

The v6.6 mainnet upgrade in August 2026 brought Ares online as the default execution client and started the phased rollout of Eidos, which separates EVM state into its own dedicated database. The network's earlier throughput sat in the 5,000 to 12,500 TPS range, meaning Giga targets a 40 to 50-fold increase in raw capacity.

If Giga's targets hold in production, Sei would sit in a throughput tier few EVM-compatible Layer 1 chains have attempted, though the gap between a controlled devnet benchmark and sustained mainnet performance remains the key variable as the rollout continues through 2026.

Giga is a multi-phase engineering program touching three parts of the blockchain: how validators agree on transactions, how those transactions get executed, and how the resulting data gets stored. The three components each have their own name. Autobahn handles consensus, the process validators use to agree on the order of transactions. Ares rebuilds the execution client, the software that actually runs transactions. Eidos rebuilds storage, the database layer that records and serves chain history.

Autobahn's multi-proposer design is the engine behind the TPS target

Most blockchains rely on a single block proposer at a time. One validator proposes a block, the network votes, and only then does the next validator get a turn. That sequential process creates a bottleneck no matter how fast the hardware is. Autobahn is a multi-proposer consensus protocol, meaning several validators can propose blocks simultaneously instead of taking turns. Paired with asynchronous execution, which decouples transaction processing from the consensus layer, this is the mechanism Sei Labs credits for the leap from thousands of TPS to a target of over 200,000.

Sei has said an internal, geographically distributed devnet has already demonstrated 5 gigagas of throughput and TPS above 200,000 under controlled conditions, though the live mainnet has not yet reached those figures and real-world performance may differ from benchmark results.

$SEI trades near $0.046 as TVL falls to $41.6 million

As of late August 2026, $SEI is trading near $0.046, with a market capitalization of roughly $308 million and a circulating supply of about 6.7 billion of the 10 billion token maximum. The token has posted a 13.5 percent gain over the trailing seven days but remains approximately 96 percent below its March 16, 2024 all-time high of $1.14.

Sei's Total Value Locked fell sharply from a peak near $626 million in mid-2025 to roughly $41.6 million as of an April 2026 reading, a signal of weak capital retention even as the technical roadmap has advanced. About a third of the 10 billion token supply remains locked under a multi-year vesting schedule, with monthly unlocks reported in the range of 112 to 132 million $SEI as of mid-2026, an ongoing source of sell-side supply.

For comparison, Ethereum's base layer processes roughly 15 to 30 TPS, while Solana has a theoretical ceiling near 65,000 TPS though real-world throughput typically runs well below that. Sei's current mainnet, using its existing Twin Turbo optimizations, already achieves sub-400ms block times, close to 30 times faster than Ethereum's finality.

Sei Labs has not set a fixed completion date for Giga, instead rolling out each component in phases and tracking progress publicly at its milestone tracker. Two of the three subsystems, Ares and Eidos, have partially reached mainnet as of August 2026. Autobahn, the consensus rebuild responsible for the multi-proposer design at the center of the 200,000 TPS target, remains the largest piece still ahead.

The engineering progress has not translated into token performance. $SEI's 96 percent drawdown from its all-time high, combined with falling TVL and ongoing token unlocks, means the market has yet to price in the upgrade's potential. Whether Giga's throughput gains can reverse that trend depends on sustained mainnet performance and developer adoption in the coming quarters.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.