Metis Hyperion: AI-driven Ethereum scaling new star

1. Overview of Metis Hyperion

Metis is an important participant in the Ethereum L2 ecosystem, based on Optimistic Rollup technology. Its early-launched Andromeda mainnet features a decentralized sequencer that hands over transaction ordering rights to community participants. In March 2025, Metis announced a dual-chain strategy: launching the high-performance Hyperion chain on top of the existing general-purpose chain Andromeda. Andromeda is positioned as a secure and reliable general-purpose L2, while Hyperion focuses on high-frequency, high-throughput, and AI-driven application scenarios.

The Hyperion architecture is built on top of the Metis SDK, with its core being the brand new MetisVM virtual machine. This virtual machine is EVM-compatible and supports AI-optimized instructions, aiming to enhance scalability and decentralization, significantly improving transaction efficiency. According to reports, Hyperion is committed to creating a "high-performance, AI-native" L2 network that can achieve near millisecond-level transaction confirmations and extremely high transaction throughput, providing infrastructure support for on-chain LLM inference, decentralized AI agents, and other AI-native applications.

The development roadmap of Metis can be summarized in two directions: first, continuously improving the core L2 infrastructure, such as introducing real-time data availability migration and fraud proof mechanisms in the Andromeda upgrade in May 2025; second, advancing modularity and multi-chain interoperability, reducing development barriers through the Metis SDK, and promoting the development of a multi-chain ecosystem. The launch of Hyperion has, to some extent, reshaped the value logic of the METIS token, transforming Metis from a single L2 into a "multi-chain infrastructure + AI-specific chain" platform.

2. The Logic of Implementing On-chain LLM by Metis

2.1 AI ecosystem closed-loop three-piece set: SDK, Hyperion, LazAI

Hyperion, as an Optimistic Rollup, inherits the security model of Metis and the Optimism system, mainly innovating in parallel computing, data availability, and decentralization, with a focus on optimizing AI and high-frequency application scenarios. Metis promotes ecological construction through three major systems: Metis SDK, Hyperion, and LazAI.

• Parallel Execution Engine: Hyperion introduces parallel execution technology such as Block-STM, using optimistic concurrency control and dynamic DAG scheduling algorithms to allow independent transactions within the same block to run in parallel, significantly increasing throughput.

• Decentralized Sorter: The transaction sorting authority of Hyperion is jointly borne by a multi-node network, preventing front-running and centralized interference through a rotation of leaders and a cryptographic memory pool combined with the proposer-builder separation (PBS) mechanism.

• Data Availability: The Hyperion plan aims to ensure data availability by utilizing Ethereum's new features and external DA services. With the advancement of EIP-4844, Hyperion will directly publish transaction data to L1 through blob transactions, inheriting Ethereum's security and reducing costs.

• Fraud Proof Mechanism: Hyperion employs an upgraded optimistic model for fraud proof. "Observers" in the network have a window period (e.g., 7 days) to submit challenges to prove the block is invalid. Upon a successful challenge, the malicious block will be rolled back, and the responsible party will be penalized.

In terms of AI-native infrastructure, the Metis SDK allows users to independently build L2 or L3 blockchains, integrating an upgraded EVM (MetisVM), parallel processing capabilities, and a decentralized sorting mechanism. Hyperion is a high-performance AI-specific Layer2 built on this SDK. According to official sources, MetisVM improves transaction efficiency by approximately 30% through dynamic optimization of opcode and parallel execution mechanisms. MetisDB uses memory-mapped Merkle trees and concurrency control to achieve nanosecond-level state access, virtually eliminating storage bottlenecks. The combination of these technologies enables Hyperion to perform AI inference tasks such as large language models (LLM) directly on-chain, laying a solid foundation for AI contracts.

In the field of AI project incubation, Metis actively promotes projects such as the LazAI protocol. LazAI is an open network focused on "trustworthy AI data assets", aimed at addressing the issues of data opacity and inconsistency in AI usage. It leverages blockchain's verifiable computing and standardized mechanisms to create an open and transparent data market, ensuring that AI models use high-quality data and supporting cross-chain applications. Based on LazAI, Metis also launched the Alith framework, which is a development tool for AI agents tailored for blockchain. Developers can quickly develop and deploy AI Agents on Metis using the Alith SDK.

2.2 Hyperion's differentiated competitiveness

Compared to other L2s, Hyperion allows Metis to demonstrate stronger competitiveness in the following aspects:

• High-Performance Execution Layer: Hyperion, as an AI-oriented high-performance Layer 2, achieves near real-time settlement and Web2-level response speed through Optimistic Rollup, parallel execution, and distributed sorting technologies. MetisVM is tailored for high-frequency trading and AI tasks, featuring dynamic opcode optimization, parallel execution, and caching mechanisms, significantly enhancing the execution efficiency of smart contracts.

• Dual-chain strategy: Metis retains the Andromeda chain as a general-purpose L2 while launching Hyperion specifically to serve AI scenarios. This "dual network" architecture balances versatility and specialization, avoiding homogenized competition with other L2s and providing dedicated space for AI applications.

• Metis SDK and Developer Ecosystem: Metis SDK is a modular toolkit for developers that integrates blueprints, building tools, and standard interfaces, making it easy to quickly set up custom execution layers or applications. It supports developers in rapidly deploying Layer2/Layer3, facilitating smooth migration or interaction between projects on Andromeda and Hyperion, thus improving ecosystem construction efficiency and interoperability.

• Decentralized Sorter: Metis launched the industry's first fully decentralized sorter in 2024, transferring transaction sorting rights to community nodes and a staking mechanism. This mechanism achieves fault tolerance and censorship resistance through rotating consensus nodes and incentivized token governance, eliminating the risk of single points of failure.

3. Metis's Strategy to Address Ethereum's Focus on L1

3.1 The autonomous development roadmap of Metis

Assuming that Ethereum focuses on its own L1 development (such as underlying consensus and sharding upgrades), rather than continuing to directly expand L2, Metis has adopted a strategy of modularization and multi-chain.

First, Metis's dual-chain architecture and MetisSDK provide the capability to build multiple dedicated chains. The launch of Hyperion marks Metis's transformation from a "single L2" to a "modular multi-chain infrastructure." With MetisSDK, any team can quickly create customized blockchains, configuring components such as parallel execution consensus, EVM-compatible layers, AI-optimized VMs, and on-chain storage. This means that Metis not only operates two chains but can also support more "industry-specific chains," such as AI computing chains, DePIN infrastructure chains, gaming chains, etc., to meet the needs of different scenarios.

Secondly, Metis places great importance on cross-chain interoperability and collaborative ecosystems. The official roadmap mentions the introduction of cross-chain bridging and data/computation aggregation mechanisms, with plans to integrate Chainlink CCIP to allow for the free flow of assets and smart contracts between Metis and other public chains. The Hyperion architecture emphasizes "shared bridges + cross-chain interconnection" and proposes "decentralized data and computation aggregation," connecting AI applications with various data networks and computing resources.

Metis is also actively promoting community participation. By opening up the role of the sequencer, anyone can become a block proposer by staking and receive sequencing rewards. At the same time, Metis plans to introduce an AI node operation incentive mechanism to encourage more developers to deploy inference services and provide on-chain AI capabilities.

3.2 Metis All in AI strategic-driven ecological development

To address the centralization risks and performance bottlenecks present in on-chain AI services, Hyperion and LazAI have collaborated to introduce the Alith AI agent framework. Developers can use the Alith SDK to write "AI agents" that are deployed as contract modules on Hyperion. These agents can handle functions such as model selection, inference logic, and fault response, and can be directly called by other contracts on-chain to implement features such as chatbots, prediction tools, or DAO assistants.

Hyperion incorporates AI reasoning into the on-chain execution process through mechanisms such as precompiled contracts. The reasoning results can be anchored on-chain using methods such as logs, reproducible operations, or trusted execution environments, achieving verifiable trust. This design retains the transparency of blockchain while meeting the computational needs of AI, promoting "AI on-chain".

Hyperion's parallel processing and low-latency characteristics are particularly suitable for AI tasks. As long as there are no conflicts between requests, they can be executed simultaneously, greatly surpassing the efficiency of traditional L2's sequential execution. MetisVM has been optimized for AI, such as improving performance using Rust/WASM and supporting various inputs like text and images, allowing AI models to run directly on-chain. This series of designs aims to achieve what Metis calls "the first Layer 2 protocol capable of running large language models natively on-chain."

4. ETH Hyperion vs. Solana AI

4.1 AI Competitive Scene Comparison

The market enthusiasm for Crypto+AI has achieved great success on Solana. The Solana community has promoted open protocols such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), attempting to allow off-chain AI models to query on-chain data through standardized interfaces. QuickNode demonstrated how to set up an MCP server on Solana, enabling AI like Claude to directly access Solana blockchain information via RPC. However, most AI solutions on Solana run AI models off-chain and call results on-chain.

The uniqueness of Hyperion lies in its attempt to execute AI reasoning directly on-chain, something that Solana has not yet achieved. If Hyperion successfully becomes the first Layer-2 protocol to support on-chain native execution of LLM, it means that it not only provides data interfaces but also directly offers on-chain computing power for AI models to run in MetisVM, with each computation completed within the blockchain's execution environment. This design decentralizes AI more thoroughly than Solana's solution, as the AI reasoning results on Hyperion can be verified and traced on-chain, inherently resistant to tampering and censorship; while Solana's MPC relies more on trusting external models and only ensures the security of the data pathway.

Solana has a natural advantage in high concurrency processing capabilities and mature GPU chip support architecture, while Hyperion focuses on compatibility and ecological interaction with the Ethereum ecosystem: EVM compatibility, MetisSDK ecosystem, and METIS token liquidity.

Overall, Hyperion and Solana are not directly substitutive; rather, they offer an alternative approach to the intersection of blockchain and AI: Solana relies on its network performance and traditional LLM interface (MCP); Metis, on the other hand, relies on its smart contract platform, launching native on-chain inference capabilities.

The significance of Hyperion 4.2 for Ethereum AI development

Hyperion is not the current universal key. Most of the so-called "AI+chain" projects are still at the conceptual level, with very few cases that can be verified as productivity applications. The issues of model ownership and trust have also not been resolved: how to trace the source of models trained off-chain and how to prove the correctness of their execution results on-chain? These are fundamental infrastructure-level questions that need to be addressed.

The system design of Hyperion addresses these pain points to some extent by providing support for AI inference at the protocol layer, which solves some of the computing power issues. The optimization of parallel execution and MetisVM significantly enhances on-chain computing capabilities beyond traditional L2, but this does not mean that Hyperion solves all problems at once.

It is certain that Hyperion brings new possibilities for Web3 AI, as well as for Ether.