Solana Labs sometimes tracks its success against Ethereum in terms of developer adoption, says Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs. He believes this is important as Ethereum is the market leader.
Yakovenko said it’s interesting to see the kind of developers who choose Ethereum over Solana. However, he pushed back against the idea of Solana being an “Ethereum killer”. Yakovenko finds it funny, that people call Solana an Ethereum killer. He highlighted that Solana is very different. The executive said the two proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains are almost complementary in many ways.
Solana, launched in March 2020, is a popular blockchain for dapps and NFTs because of its fast transaction speed. But Solana stands out from Ethereum as it’s a mixed blockchain that also uses a proof-of-history consensus algorithm. Solana with its concept of proof-of-history provides a chronicle of previous events on the blockchain. It ensures that there is a common record of what happened and when for permanent reference.
Yakovenko believes that Ethereum is focused on the idea that validators need to be extremely cheap. He pointed out that developers are sacrificing everything else to achieve just that. The Solana Labs co-founder said Ethereum’s sharded network and its future plans are all based around the idea of very cheap validation. Yakovenko outlined that it opens up the space to a decentralized network optimized for consensus at the speed of light. He said there are use cases that one can’t run on Ethereum that they can run on Solana. Thus, the reason developers prefer Solana over Ethereum.
Furthermore, Yakovenko doesn’t believe in a multi-chain future. He said that when one uses an application, they are still aware that they are using either Solana or Ethereum application. Probably, users want to make the distinction. New people are entering the space. Yakovenko outlined that when there is 100 million active users, its to be seen whether the next 90 million will care about which blockchain they are using. And they will use the killer app that brought them there.
