The crypto world is full of fierce competition, but the rivalry between Ethereum and Solana crystallizes fundamental differences over the future of the blockchain. While Solana displays enviable performance in terms of transaction processing speed, influential members of the Ethereum community, such as Ryan Berckmans, believe that it cannot establish itself as a backbone of the future decentralized financial system.
A Monolithic Model in Question
Initially, Solana presented itself as a monolithic blockchain, promising to handle massive transactions on a single chain.
However, this approach has evolved, and Solana now integrates layer 2 solutions, renamed “network extensions”. For Ethereum purists, this sounds like an admission of failure: the single chain of the Solana crypto was ultimately not sufficient to meet global needs.
Berkmans Caveats: The fact that Solana currently has only one production customer, Agave Rust, complicates its claim to become a global backbone.
A robust decentralized infrastructure should be able to rely on multiple independent clients to avoid single points of failure, essential for ensuring security and resilience.
Added to this are major technical challenges. Solana crypto's bandwidth requirements are sky-high, recommending a minimum of 10 Gbps, a requirement that de facto limits decentralization and global participation.
For many experts, a global blockchain should be able to adapt to less expensive infrastructures, allowing wider adoption.
Crypto: A History and Economic Structure Discussed
At the same time, Solana's history of failures fuels mistrust. Unlike Ethereum, which has backup capabilities to continue producing blocks in the event of a problem, Solana suffers from structural flaws when it comes to redundancy. In other words, when an incident occurs, the entire network can be paralyzed.
Beyond the technical aspects, critics also focus on the governance and distribution structure of the tokens.
While Solana's initial allocation is dominated by 98% internal funds, Ethereum has preferred a more democratic approach, with 80% of its tokens available for public sale. This economic centralization of Solana raises doubts about its ability to become a truly decentralized network.
Finally, innovations in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as the emergence of zk proof aggregation for L2 layers, further accentuate the difficulties for Solana. By focusing on scaling L1 execution, Solana appears to be ignoring a major development: the future of blockchain increasingly appears to revolve around L2 solutions, which offer flexibility and efficiency.
Large international companies, such as Coinbase, Sony, and Visa, seem to place their trust in Ethereum, choosing its L2 solutions for their projects. This market validation reflects a broader trend, that of a gradual adoption of Ethereum as a basis for the development of decentralized applications.
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