Status: Accepted Date: 2026-03-24
LearnVault requires a blockchain environment that supports high-frequency micro-transactions (milestone payouts) and non-transferable identity tokens. We evaluated the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystem (L1s and L2s) against the Stellar network using the Soroban smart contract platform. Key requirements included predictable gas costs, WASM-based execution for performance, and native support for regulated assets.
We have selected Stellar/Soroban as the primary execution layer for LearnVault.
- Deterministic Fees: Soroban’s resource-based fee model prevents the "gas wars" common in EVM, ensuring students can always claim rewards.
- WASM Performance: Moving away from the EVM interpreted bytecode to WebAssembly allows for more complex meteorological data processing within smart contracts if needed in future iterations.
- Native Asset Integration: Stellar’s "Classic" assets integrate seamlessly with Soroban, allowing us to leverage built-in compliance features without the overhead of complex ERC-20 implementations.
- Ecosystem Maturity: We lose access to the vast library of OpenZeppelin EVM contracts and must build more primitives from scratch in Rust.
- Tooling: While growing, the Soroban CLI and SDKs are less mature than Hardhat/Foundry, requiring more manual DevOps work.