Supra's $1M Challenge: Breaking Through EVM's Performance Limitations

Supra, a Layer-1 blockchain supported by Coinbase Ventures and focused on Automatic DeFi (AutoFi), has raised the stakes in the race for technological leadership by putting forth a $1 million reward to any developer or research group able to outperform its parallel EVM execution engine, SupraBTM. This competition, known as the , is a personal pledge from CEO and Co-Founder Joshua Tobkin, who is putting up his own $SUPRA tokens to back Supra’s assertion of having the fastest EVM-parallel execution engine.

. Beyond this, the foundation is also offering an ongoing $40,000 incentive, though so far, no participant has managed to exceed SupraBTM’s results in public testing.

This initiative targets a fundamental challenge in blockchain scalability: transaction processing. While consensus mechanisms and data availability have seen significant progress, parallel execution within the

Virtual Machine (EVM) is still a major obstacle for applications that demand minimal latency, such as DeFi, real-time gaming, and AI-powered autonomous agents . SupraEVM, utilizing SupraBTM (Block Transactional Memory), claims to overcome this with an architecture designed to be aware of conflict specifications. This approach minimizes overhead, predicts transaction conflicts, and organizes execution through statically analyzed dependency graphs.

Comparative benchmarks with Monad, another high-performance EVM solution, showcase SupraBTM’s superiority. When tested on the same hardware (a 16-core AMD 4564P CPU with 192 GB RAM), SupraBTM achieved over Monad in various scenarios and delivered a compared to standard sequential EVM execution. Its deterministic scheduling also ensures reliability even in high-conflict environments typical of DeFi arbitrage. Jon Jones, Supra’s CBO and Co-Founder, highlighted the system’s reproducibility and ease of testing, saying, “Supra was engineered from scratch to unify execution, consensus, and foundational infrastructure into a single, integrated system.”

To be eligible for the prize, entrants must satisfy rigorous requirements: process 100,000 Ethereum mainnet blocks, use standard hardware with a maximum of 16 CPU cores, and demonstrate at least a 15% performance boost across different thread setups. All entries must be open source, verifiable, and accessible for public review

. Tobkin, whose tokens will vest over a two-year period starting in 2027, described the contest as a “test of the primary technical limitation facing the EVM,” emphasizing the importance of the industry recognizing and adopting better solutions.

Supra’s vertically integrated approach goes further than just execution. Its Layer-1 blockchain features built-in high-speed smart contracts, native oracles, and cross-chain messaging without bridges, supporting AutoFi primitives that create ongoing protocol revenue

. This infrastructure also enables on-chain AI agents to automate DeFi processes securely. The technical team has released benchmark comparisons between SupraBTM and Monad, with more information and rules available on the project’s dedicated bounty documentation page.

The $1 million competition highlights Supra’s dedication to openness and innovation. By encouraging public scrutiny of its execution engine, the project supports the broader industry’s push for scalability without sacrificing decentralization. As Tobkin remarked, “If someone can create a better system, the entire industry should benefit from it”

.