"Experimental" EVM. That was the brief for Week 3. For this series, it means finding a chain where the Solidity code stays the same but the neighborhood is completely foreign. No L2s, no rollups, no "rebranded" OP Stack chains. I wanted my code secured by something that isn't an Ethereum validator.
I expected a playground. I found a graveyard.
The ghosts and the marketing plays
Step outside the Ethereum L2 bubble and the landscape changes fast. Most of the names I remembered from previous cycles are either in maintenance mode or actively winding down.
Evmos, once the poster child for EVM on Cosmos, effectively finished in 2025. Milkomeda—the bridge to Cardano and Algorand—is archived and frozen. Vaulta (the artist formerly known as EOS EVM) is being deprecated in favor of yet another project. (I’ve lost track of how many times EOS has rebranded at this point).
Then there’s the "Bitcoin EVM" wave. BOB (Build on Bitcoin) sounds perfect, until you realize it’s just another OP Stack rollup on Ethereum where you pay gas in ETH. It’s a marketing play in a trench coat. I’m looking for a new security model, not a new way to pay fees to Ethereum L1.
Hedera was another candidate, but the "EVM compatibility" has too many asterisks. You have to "activate" new MetaMask addresses manually. The contract size limit is enforced through a non-EVM file service that breaks standard Foundry deploys. It’s a neighborhood with a very restrictive HOA—technically live, but a nightmare to move into. I'm here to write code, not read a 40-page manual on how to use a wallet.
The scored finalists
I ran the remaining candidates through the rubric. I wasn't just looking for a chain that worked; I wanted one that was actually alive.
| Chain | Platform | Score | One-line verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core DAO | Bitcoin (Satoshi Plus) | 49/60 | Cleanest DX, stable ecosystem, Bitcoin consensus is the real story |
| Moonbeam | Polkadot parachain | 48/60 | Solid tooling, sharp ecosystem decline |
| Flare Network | Data-centric L1 | 48/60 | FTSOv2 oracles are interesting; niche audience |
| Berachain | Cosmos SDK | 45/60 | TVL collapsed from $3.2B to $74M since launch |
| Kava | Cosmos SDK EVM | 41/60 | Maintenance mode, verification friction |
| Rootstock / RSK | Bitcoin (merge-mined) | 41/60 | Oldest Bitcoin EVM, Foundry bug, HTTP-only RPC |
| Astar Network | Polkadot parachain | 41/60 | Team pivoted to Soneium; parachain in caretaker mode |
| Neon EVM | Solana SVM | 36/60 | Exotic, but lacks Ethereum's transfer() gas stipend / reentrancy protection |
| Canto | Cosmos SDK EVM | 36/60 | No GitHub commits since Sep 2024; team status unknown |
Why Core DAO
Core DAO won because it offered the cleanest path to the most interesting narrative. While other survivors are in maintenance mode (Moonbeam, Kava, Astar) or dealing with massive TVL drawdowns (Berachain), Core DAO feels stable enough to actually build on. I checked the explorer—the blocks are ticking over, the documentation is current, and the "neighborhood" doesn't feel like it’s being packed into boxes.
The hook is "Satoshi Plus" consensus. It’s a three-party model: Bitcoin miners delegate their hash power, BTC holders stake natively (via OP_CLTV time-locks, no custodians involved), and CORE stakers handle the validation. It’s an EVM chain physically integrated into the Bitcoin mining economy.
Coming from Week 1 (Base, an optimistic rollup) and Week 2 (Scroll, a ZK rollup), Core DAO is the third major answer to the "what secures my code?" question. This time, the answer is Bitcoin miners.
The ones that got away
Flare Network and Rootstock are still on my list. Flare's "enshrined oracles"—where data feeds are part of the L1 protocol itself—is a compelling piece of infrastructure. Rootstock remains the OG Bitcoin EVM, and despite some Foundry-related address bugs, it's still the purist's choice for merge-mining.
But for Week 3, we're heading to Core. The code is the same, but the security model is a completely different animal.
→ The live app is at https://proof-of-support.pages.dev
→ Scoring methodology for the series: How I'm Scoring the Chains
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