# What is Eclipse? Eclipse is a high-performance, Ethereum-settled Layer 2 that combines the security of Ethereum, the parallelism of the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), and deep hardware/software co-design to deliver unprecedented performance for blockchain applications. Unlike traditional L2s that inherit the architectural constraints of Layer 1s, Eclipse separates performance from security. By anchoring to Ethereum for settlement and security guarantees, while engineering every other layer: execution, data availability, proving with performance-first principles, Eclipse unlocks what we call **GigaCompute**: orders of magnitude more computational capacity for decentralized applications. The result is a platform capable of supporting AI workloads, real-time gaming, high-frequency DeFi, and decentralized infrastructure (DePIN) at scale, without sacrificing the security, composability, or liquidity of Ethereum. To start, Eclipse has forked Solana, and our execution environment is a direct fork of Solana's open-source repository. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.eclipse.xyz/architecture/eclipse-architecture/what-is-eclipse.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.