The Top 15 EVM Compatible Blockchains of 2023
While many blockchains are EVM compatible, fewer blockchains are EVM equivalent. While EVM compatible blockchains provide a strong degree of interoperability, EVM equivalent blockchains are in full compliance with the formal specifications of the Ethereum protocol. EVM equivalent blockchains are generally Layer-2s.
Unlike EVM compatible chains, EVM equivalent chains actually fully copy and paste the code of the EVM into the Layer-2, and are beginning to blur the lines between the Ethereum mainnet and the Layer-2 blockchain operating on top of it. The increasingly popular Ethereum Layer-2 Optimism (which uses Optimistic rollups for scaling) is perhaps the best-known Layer-2 currently transitioning from EVM compatibility to EVM equivalence. Another increasingly popular chain introducing EVM equivalence is Metis, a hard fork of Optimism, which is also in the process of achieving EVM equivalence, albeit in a slightly different way.