- Author: Ethereum OG Ryan Berckmans
- Original: There'll be one global backbone – Ethereum
- Compiled by: Zombit
Ethereum is the backbone of the new global financial system, carrying L2 and L1 applications. No other blockchain can match this position. Some have suggested that Solana could become the backbone, but Solana can never become the infrastructure for the global financial system, and this article will explain five reasons why.
Four years ago, Ethereum began to focus on becoming the backbone of the new global financial system, focusing on supporting the needs of L2 and L1 applications. This strategy is gradually being recognized as the top-tier L1 strategy, and although it is still in the early stages, the rapid growth of L2 is the most direct proof.
While Solana has performed well in terms of meme coins and SOL prices recently, as the trend of L2 eating up the new public chain market share becomes increasingly evident, the Solana leadership also seems to have realized this reality and proposed that Solana could transform into a "backbone" like Ethereum.
However, Solana is inherently not suitable to serve as the backbone for L2 or global-scale L1 activities. I will explain the reasons in detail.
First, let's review the process of Solana's leadership gradually accepting Ethereum's L2 backbone strategy. Initially, Solana built a fast and low-cost "single-chain", which was in their "monolithic" era, and they confidently promoted this concept. But over time, they have shifted this terminology to "integrated". By mid-this year, Solana acknowledged that L2 is the right path, as their flagship applications have gradually begun to build custom L2 application chains on Sol. Additionally, an important Solana community member had posted a radical post about Solana needing to adopt L2, which sparked heated discussion in the community, as the Solana leadership had not yet publicly acknowledged the inevitability of L2.
Although Solana's leadership has expressed the intention to support L2, they have claimed that Solana's L2 is not L2, but "network scaling". This is a significant marketing shift, similar to Solana's recent introduction of "real TPS", which aims to correct their past practice of including 80% of the consensus burden in the reported TPS data. Solana has long reported a TPS of 3000, but the actual TPS is around 750.
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ToggleWhy does Solana now support Ethereum's backbone strategy?
The reason is that the world will soon need thousands or even tens of thousands of new chains, and L2 has an advantage over Alt L1 (e.g., Coinbase, Kraken, Sony, EVE Online, etc. have all chosen L2), so becoming the backbone of L2 is undoubtedly the best strategy.
So can Solana become a backbone chain? The answer is no, Solana does not have this condition, and the reasons are as follows.
Five reasons why Solana cannot become the global backbone chain
1. Lack of true client-side diversity
Client-side diversity means that the blockchain is run by multiple independent processes in parallel, which helps prevent attacks and accidents. Client-side diversity is crucial for becoming a global backbone chain. Today, Solana has only one production client (agave rust), and the development of the second client (firedancer) is progressing slowly and has not yet reached the standard to carry 50% of the output share.
2. High bandwidth demand leads to centralization risk
Solana requires 10Gbps of upload bandwidth, which in reality will lead to centralization and increased risk. The purpose of the global backbone is to minimize risk, and the high bandwidth demand will severely limit its deployment flexibility.
3. Facing future disruption risk
Solana has experienced multiple shutdowns in the past and lacks the protocol-level redundancy of Ethereum. For a global backbone with over $100 trillion in entrusted assets, stability is crucial, and downtime would greatly undermine its applicability.
4. Economic centralization
About 98% of the initial SOL supply was held internally, with only about 2% sold publicly. In contrast, Ethereum sold 80% of its supply publicly, and the PoW high inflation model widely distributed ETH holdings over seven years. This economic centralization makes it difficult for Solana to become a global backbone chain.
5. zk Proof Aggregation Suitable for L2 Settlement
zk proof aggregation enables the L1 backbone chain to support extremely high scalability without sacrificing decentralization. Solana focuses on scaling the L1 execution layer, but this is at odds with the demand to maximize decentralization and trusted neutrality of the global backbone chain.
For these reasons, Solana can never become the backbone of the new global financial system.
In short, Ethereum's backbone strategy is the best L1 strategy, and while Solana may attempt to transform in this direction, it will not succeed.
