Kick out the EVM: How we hit 42 million payments/s on a purpose-built L2
Most L2s inherit the EVM and its limits. What happens if an L2 does exactly one thing? We built Paychannels, a payments-only L2 on Polygon that scales as a fleet of independent hubs, to find out. Throughput scaled linearly: every server we added contributed about 450k payments/s. On 100 commodity servers it sustained over 45 million fully verified payments/s, each confirmed in about 20 microseconds.
Using that system as a case study, this talk covers:
- what specialization unlocks: orders-of-magnitude throughput, near-zero fees, blinded state with selective disclosure, and KYC/sanctions policy enforced in the protocol
- freedom to choose your own cryptography, including post-quantum signatures
- what you give up, and how to benchmark it honestly
We then trace the same pattern through non-EVM, app-specific L2s like Lighter, and end with a practical test for when your app should leave the EVM.
Speakers: Mudit Gupta
Track: Users, Builders, and Agents
