The Evolving Landscape of Smart Contract Virtual Machines and the Introduction of Tycho VM

Abstract

This paper surveys the evolution of smart contract virtual machines (VMs), highlighting major designs such as Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Move VM, Solana VM and couple of lesser known VMs. It eventually proposes a Rust implementation of Ton Open Network Virtual Machine (TVM) called Tycho VM. We analyze the theoretical foundations behind TVM’s “everything is a cell” paradigm and message execution lifecycle inside sandboxed VM. We also contextualize the role of virtual machines in the broader blockchain ecosystem by referencing developer adoption metrics and indicate challenges arising from that, namely, inefficiencies of Solidity to Tycho VM compiler which are going to be addressed in the future research.