Author: Joyce, BlockBeats
Title: “Solana and Ethereum Start a Debate, How Does the Community Take Sides?”
On June 3rd, Bankless released a video titled “ETHEREUM VS. SOLANA: Which Blockchain Wins 2024 & Beyond?”, featuring a conversation between Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake discussing their views on the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems. This nearly two-hour debate from the crypto community’s powerhouses has garnered significant attention in the overseas community.
The two most prominent ecosystems in the crypto industry, Ethereum and Solana, showcased their controversies in this video through a direct dialogue between the “representatives,” allowing even ordinary community users who may not be familiar with specific technical details to perceive the “difference in temperament” between Ethereum and Solana.
As summarized by community user Phoenixzen83, SOL represents “practical, execution, action-oriented, user obsession, realism, early failure/fast/iterative/improvement/breakthrough boundaries, seeking PMF, application/product-centric”, while ETH represents “academic, ideal, simple, strictly in all marginal situations, focused on infrastructure, moving slowly and steadily/ rigorously tested security.”
Key Debate Topics:
The debate agenda set by Bankless for the Ethereum vs. Solana discussion included four segments: “good, bad, ugly, final.” Each representative elaborated on their positive views on Ethereum and Solana ecosystems, pointed out temporary and solvable shortcomings in the ecosystems, expressed the irreparable flaws in the opponent’s ecosystem in the “ugly” segment, and concluded with the final vision for the ecosystem.
“Good”:
1. Justin praised Solana for its high throughput, low fees, excellent user experience, extensive adoption, and good financial performance, viewing it as a healthy competition that can accelerate Ethereum’s development.
2. Anatoly commended Ethereum for its large-scale distributed node network and robust security, believing it surpasses simple majority honest assumption.
“Bad”:
1. Anatoly criticized Ethereum’s EVM design and the split between L1 and L2, leading to friction among developers and fragmentation of liquidity.
2. Justin pointed out that Solana’s design with short block times and low slot-to-ping ratio might lead to verification nodes being vulnerable to centralization attacks.
“Ugly”:
1. Justin mentioned that Solana’s network effect isolation from L1 and Ethereum limits its potential.
2. Anatoly stated that Ethereum’s focus on “ultrasound money” makes it challenging to derive value from execution/transaction fees.
“Final”:
1. Anatoly believes Solana will optimize hardware/bandwidth improvements to provide the fastest, cheapest global state applications.
2. Justin thinks Ethereum’s network effect and composability make it the dominant “value internet,” while Solana has a small chance to surpass its position.
Community Standings:
Matthew Sigel, research director at Van Eck (supporting Justin):
The winner is Justin, albeit a hard-fought victory. The economic security issue is crucial, and denying it, as Toly attempts, is foolish. Economic security is essential if 51% (or 66%) of staked assets are controlled, a significant amount of locked value may be seized in an attack. Economic security is paramount.
Sreeram Kannan, founder of Eigenlayer (neutral):
Justin and Toly are both correct; we still lack good metrics. Solana’s shorter slot times will indeed result in less MEV (as Toly mentioned), but it may also lead to more game theory (as Justin mentioned).
Hayden, founder of Uniswap (neutral):
In terms of long-term thinking, supports Justin; in terms of short-term applications, supports Toly.
Richard, founder of Tesnor (supporting Anatoly):
To some extent, economic security is indeed a meme. Good engineering design is more critical than economic security, as economic security may overshadow design flaws.
Christine Kim, researcher at Galaxy (supporting Justin):
The lack of long-term thinking is why SOL cannot catch up with ETH valuation.
Vapor, trader (supporting Toly):
Comparing Ethereum in the next 20 years with the current Solana is wishful thinking. Ethereum’s value is being actively exploited by L2 sorters on the execution side and DA protocols on the DA side. L2 is an isolated ecosystem that destroys killer apps for smart contract platforms, i.e., composability.
Video Link:
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