2021 saw a significant proportion of developers move from Ethereum to rival blockchains. Mainly because the Ethereum network continued to struggle with high gas charges and congestion. Well, one network that benefited enormously from this situation was Solana. His meteoric rise in 2021 has positioned him as one of Ethereum’s top killers.
Solana’s native token Sol reached a new all-time high in early November. Furthermore, at the time of writing, the token registered a 10% ROI over the past week. Also, it had a 24-hour trading volume of over $3.6 billion, at press time.
Oddly enough, an interesting question that arises here is: with a plethora of similar protocols already on the market, how exactly does Solana differ from Ethereum? Well, that’s because developers like to have low-extractive, super-fast layers of regulation when it comes to deploying DeFi protocols, according to Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko.
Speaking at a recent podcast, the developer commented,
“What we’re building is a really, really fast, high performance execution layer, but settlement is a hallmark of that thing as well. “
To give a gist, settlement layers support other blockchain ecosystems by providing security and immutability to transactions happening on protocols built on top of it. Since it is incorruptible and always available. Ethereum currently acts as the settlement layer for many networks, given its unhinged position in the industry.
During the Unchained podcast, Solana co-founder Raj Gokal said that Ethereum’s advantage comes only from its first-mover advantage and hold on the market. However, the downside comes from its late move to the Proof of Stake consensus. He further added,
“As long as those two designs have different purposes and functions that they’ll both continue to be valuable.”
However, with Solana’s eyes on overcoming Ethereum use cases, it remains to be seen how long this coexistence between the network will last. Earlier this year, Neon Labs announced the deployment of an Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) on Solana. Mainly, in order to allow users to benefit from Solana’s low transaction fees.
When asked whether this would make Ethereum users abandon ship and jump to their network, Solana’s Co-Founder Anatoly Yakovenko argued that “people leaving Ethereum is just never going to happen,” adding,
“The advantages of EVM and Solana are that you can start building new applications on Solidity, running any VM that cannot take advantage of and participate in the wider Solana ecosystem. “
Moreover, Yakovenko suggested that Solana had a long way to go before outdoing Ethereum. According to him, developers who have already established dApps on Ethereum but want to deploy on Solana,
“… Don’t have to split their development team and focus on two different languages to be able to franchise their brand to any new channel where users are acquired.”
Well, one example of the same is the Brave wallet, which has recently partnered with Solana. It is going to default to the network for cross-chain and native DApps for its wallet and swap interface. Another is Crowny, which is an app rewarding shoppers for various interactions with brands. It is set to be deployed on Solana next week.
