Mainsail EVM: ARK's Next-Gen Blockchain Engine is Preparing to Set Sail
A semi-technical but thoroughly digestible look at the future of ARK
Ahoy, blockchain adventurers! After years of charting the open seas of decentralized infrastructure, the ARK Ecosystem and Ardent developer team are now preparing to deploy its most formidable vessel yet, Mainsail EVM. This next-generation engine represents more than just an upgrade — it's a full-blown transformation of ARK's Layer 1 blockchain. From modularity and consensus to smart contracts and MetaMask integration, Mainsail is packing serious heat.
This post is here to help the non-technical investigator understand more about what is coming. I am going to make this short and try to tldr as much as possible while giving you an understanding of why Mainsail was created and what ARK will be in the near future.
Now, let’s unfurl the sails and explore everything that makes Mainsail EVM a serious contender in the modern Web3 arena.
From ARK Core to Mainsail: A New Identity
Formerly known as ARK Core, the new Mainsail moniker isn’t just cosmetic. Like its nautical namesake, Mainsail is now the driving force of the ARK Ecosystem. It’s been completely rebuilt with:
A Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus model inspired by Tendermint.
A TypeScript-based, modular architecture and Rust based EVM(REVM + heed).
A shift from traditional PostgreSQL to LMDB for lightning-fast block storage.
Open-source GPLv3 licensing for maximum community involvement.
“ARK Core was a toolkit. Mainsail is a spaceship.” — probably Matt from Ardent at 2am.
Mainsail is the new codebase name, the ARK coin and blockchain are not rebranding or renaming they are simply getting a brand new engine under the hood.
For the non-techy versed individual:
BFT is the underlying securing factor that gives Mainsail it’s strong security at the block validating level.
Typescript and Rust are programming languages widely known by developers.
LMDB is a high performance database library making Mainsails performance extremely fast.
GPLv3 is a simple open-source license, allowing everyone to get involved and build without needing permission from the ARK teams or business entity as long as simple rules are followed.
Full EVM Integration: Everything's a Smart Contract Now
Mainsail doesn’t just support the EVM — it’s run by it. Every transaction, from a basic token transfer to validator registration, is now handled by smart contracts using a universal transaction type.
This design simplifies transaction logic, reduces surface area for bugs, and opens the door for full compatibility with MetaMask, ethers.js, viem, and Ethereum tooling as a whole.
Now let’s get just a little technical info involved. After reading this, my goal is to help you understand things without needing developer knowledge or a computer science degree.
Visualizing Consensus Scenarios (technical jargon incoming)
This diagram shows how Mainsail's consensus engine behaves under different scenarios:
Normal Execution: All consensus stages (propose, prevote, precommit) complete within the expected 8-second block time.
Block Not Accepted: If consensus fails in a round, a new proposer steps up in the next round (e.g., 3/1).
Long Prevote Time: Illustrates how delays in consensus stages push out block finality, showcasing resilience under network lag.
This all sounds like technical hoopla but trust me, it’s a needed chunk of information for you to digest. Let me paint a picture for you.
A block is proposed and the block must be validated before being added to the chain.
In the previous ARK codebase, block finality was an issue that lacked an ability to completely neutralize a potential rollback of blocks on the network. Key word, potential(extremely hard to do, but theoretically possible).
This made it hard to truly build on top of ARK, which was known and one reason why bridge-chains and adding custom modules were a part of the past focus. Basically a work around, think of Legos, just adding a custom module to a new side-chained blockchain to handle a specific wanted action. Need a new transaction? Just add a new module, like wordpress for websites. That was the past solution, back in the olden times, many moons ago.
This is not to say that the concept was a complete failure as it is still technically viable and could have a use in enterprise and private systems. The ARK team even built a one-click solution that launched a completely customized ARK based blockchain for you, similar to how easy it is to launch a token today on launch platforms or how easy it is to launch a website with a wordpress like platform. If you are interested in how this model could be useful, and to who, check out this article from 2019; Startups will choose to Build Blockchains.
Back then, this was a seemingly ingenious way of solving building with interoperability. Just add more chains and link them together making each chain have a specific function that it exceled at. But as the blockchain space evolved, this was slowly fazed out as more builders didn’t want their own blockchain or to manage multiple side-chains, they wanted to build on top of an existing chain as to not need to worry about L1 issues. Basically, builders want to build cool shit, not handle consensus mechanisms and run their own chains and all the issues that surround that. There was also still the overhanging block finality issue that the old codebase just couldn’t fully solve.
Mainsail solves this with it’s new block finality and BFT which paved the way to integrate a full virtual machine(vm) and become compatible with Ethereum and all of it’s tooling. Mainsail also implemented a validator increase from 51 to 53 which helps mitigate any potential for a network stalemate or potential takeover.
Why does a validator increase to 53 matter? Well, to keep it simple, 51 is divisible by 3. Meaning there is a potential to have a 3 way tie in consensus. That’s not great and why a prime number like 53 was chosen.
All this means is that once a block is validated, it is now final with Mainsail, no going back, that’s it. And we’re not talking multiple blocks for confirmations like Bitcoin, Mainsail is virtually instant. This solves any potential issues and also opens up the ability to be fully buildable, DEX and current industry standards compatible and yes, interoperable.
Under the Hood: Serialization, APIs & Dev Experience
Ok, here is a little more technical jargon, but just go over it to get a slight understanding. The tldr of it is Mainsail has adapted an industry wide Ethereum standard in short, making it easy to build upon and be compatible with all the great tooling already produced for Ethereum. This also opens ARK up to the vast amount of developers familiar with the Ethereum and EVM ecosystems.
Some changes coming with Mainsail include:
Serialization:
RLP-based transaction encoding (Ethereum standard)
EIP-1559 style with
maxFeePerGas(priority fee always 0)vvalues updated from 27/28 to 0/1
MetaMask Integration:
Import old ARK V3 private keys
Use MetaMask to sign and send EvmCall TXs
JSON-RPC & HTTP APIs:
/receiptsfor TX outcomesEthereum-compatible field mappings for blocks and TXs
Worker Thread Architecture: How It All Comes Together (stick with me here)
This diagram breaks down the multi-container setup powering Mainsail EVM:
Container 1:
The Main Process (Consensus & P2P) runs on port
4000and writes toConsensus LMDB.Worker: ETH API runs the REVM instance, exposing JSON-RPC on port
4008.Worker: TX Pool handles unconfirmed TXs on port
4007, writing toTX Sqlite.
Container 2:
Public API Process on port
4003, connected to a synced PostgreSQL DB.
Together, this design enables modularity, scalability, and fault isolation, ensuring that consensus remains uninterrupted even during heavy API or TX pool activity.
Database & State Overhaul
LMDB now entirely handled by Rust EVM layer (
REVM-based)Supports atomic commits: all state, block, and consensus data updated together
Block gas tracked by actual gas used, not TX gas limit
Legacy compatibility includes:
Extended RLP for second signatures
Genesis block begins after last V3 block height
Did you follow all that? I know, just break it it down in plain English.
So, Mainsail is full EVM now and everyone that has ever interacted with Ethereum, Metamask or any EVM based chain will instantly be familiar with Mainsail and it’s features. It also means that there won’t need to be a brand new chain launched, Mainsail will pickup where the ARK chain is currently at when it’s time to launch. The hard work will be done in the background and the users will have the easy job.
What’s Next?
Public Mainsail EVM testnet launch
Support for BLS key registration for validators
Seamless V3 → Mainsail migration using devnet snapshots to new version of testnet
Integrations with ARK Vault, ARK Scan, and Ledger Hardware Wallets
🎉 TL;DR
Mainsail EVM is:
A blazing-fast, fully modular, smart contract enabled Layer 1
Ethereum-compatible in structure and spirit
Lean, mean, and ready for the next era of dApps, DeFi, and beyond
Backward compatible with old blockchain
Decentralized Exchange(DEX) compatible
Whether you're a dev, validator, or user, the time to climb aboard is near. Get ready — and prepare to set sail.
I hope this helps you get a better understanding of Mainsail, why it was needed, and how it works. There is so much more to explain and there will be many more updates and explanations to come, but for now, stay tuned for updates from the team as we get closer to the official Mainsail EVM public testnet launch.
Sidenote: I was recently invited to test and experience the current internal team’s testnet and integration using the enhanced Mainsail compatible ARK Vault Wallet. I have provided feedback and the team is hard at work, almost instantly on any bugs or ideas I have submitted. So far it’s very exciting to see it working in real time and the team working so quickly to refine it.
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Disclaimer time. This article was put together using official ARK SCIC posted blogs, anything outside of quoted text from official sources is strictly the opinion of The Strake Foundation. If you like these articles and reviews we would appreciate a vote for our ARK validator, delegate strakefoundation, to help us continue to inform and support the ARK community. If you would like to learn more about ARK, ARK governance and validator/delegate voting and staking, please read our complete ARK Staking Guide.