EOS Ethereum Virtual Machine Testnet Goes Live Ahead of April Mainnet Deployment

A testnet for the EOS Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) feature went live on Tuesday ahead of an April rollout.

The EVM is housed within an EOS smart contract and aims to offer high-speed transactions at cheap fees for users and developers. The move aims to eventually bolster decentralized finance (DeFi) development on the EOS network, which ultimately accrues value for eos tokens.

EVMs refer to the environment in which all Ethereum accounts and smart contracts live, serving as a virtual computer utilized by developers for creating decentralized applications (dapps).

When deployed on other blockchains, EVMs can allow developers to build dapps and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications similar to how they would on Ethereum.

EVMs are a large part of EOS’ future plans, touted as the blockchain’s "second innings."

“Many of the developers who have left EOS have done so not because they want to, but because Ethereum, for all its deficiencies, is where the action is,” the foundation said in a January post.

“EVM compatibility is essential to the potential of EOS, not just technically but also from a business perspective. Ultimately, it is essential that we welcome more Solidity developers and users to EOS, and an EVM on EOS is an excellent bridge to do just that,” it added at the time.

The EOS EVM contract is available on eosio.evm and a token bridge for transferring compatible Ethereum-based tokens to EOS is live on bridge-testnet2.trust.one.

EOS’ native tokens remained nominally changed in the past 24 hours.