Original author: Chris Burniske, Partner at Placeholder VC
Original translation: PANews
On December 30, Ethereum co-founder “Vitalik” Vitalik Buterin posted on social media: “Some smart people told me that Solana is a serious and smart development community. Now those terrible, opportunistic people have been washed away, and the Solana blockchain will have a bright future. Although it is difficult for me to judge this from the outside, I still hope that the Solana community will have a fair chance to thrive.”
So who is this “smart guy”? The answer is most likely Chris Burniske, a partner at crypto venture capital Placeholder VC. Chris Burniske posted on social media that Vitalik Buterin recently asked him why he likes and is still optimistic about Solana, so he decided to make public what he told Vitalik Buterin and share it with the crypto community. PANews compiled it as follows:
Solana is "fascinating" because its community has a group of hardcore and hardcore developers and "tech geeks", which means that compared with Ethereum and Cosmos, Solana's on-chain innovation is more independent (of course, Placeholder VC is active in Solana, Ethereum, and Cosmos communities). Some community contributors are hardware fans, some are keen on network optimization, and validators are fulfilling their commitments in Solana. Compared to those financial speculators, there are still many exciting BUIDLers on Solana, and this is also the vision that Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko hopes to achieve.
Although some people accuse Anatoly Yakovenko of betraying the ideals of cryptocurrency, he is actually more pragmatic than Vitalik Buterin or Ethan of Cosmos, as expected from his original vision - to bring blockchain technology to billions of people. We all know that cryptocurrencies always have boom/bust cycles (every few years), and perhaps it is precisely because of Anatoly Yakovenko's "commitment" under this ideology that the Solana community has survived the market shock.
In terms of the ecosystem, the Dapp builders on Solana are more like a hybrid of Web2 and Web3, which means that they understand the cryptographic operation mode very well on the back end, and have the ability to communicate with the mainstream on the front end. There is no doubt that the crypto industry needs more such talents. More importantly, the developers in the Solana ecosystem are extremely determined in the bear market because they know that the future of Web2 will be Web3. If you look at the products in the Solana ecosystem that are easy to use and delivered to the general public, you will know that the Solana "team is doing things."
Solana ecosystem projects that Placeholder VC has directly worked with include Vault APP (founded by the former founder of FanDuel), Orca (team members are from Ethereum developers), Solend Protocol (team members are also from Ethereum developers), and NATION.
All of these teams are full of ideals and are committed to building products for the community. Frankly speaking, for the current stage of crypto networks, culture is sometimes more important than technology, and this is exactly the direction that the Solana ecosystem is working towards.
Compared to many DeFi projects on the Ethereum chain, Solana chain projects basically follow the principle of fair token distribution. For example, the number of tokens reserved for the Orca team accounts for only 20% (as shown in the figure below). Most Solana chain project teams did not participate in the Alameda Research "scam", and the entire ecosystem is also working hard to eradicate this behavior.
In terms of the technology itself, Solana Virtual Machine SVM is also relatively novel and efficient, and it is likely to become a new on-chain development standard in the future. There are already projects built on SVM, such as Sei Labs, which has launched the SVM-compatible chain Nitro, and Eclipse also uses SVM to customize modular Rollups. SVM is faster than EVM because the modular stack makes it easier to launch products on different DA layers.
Meanwhile, Anatoly Yakovenko and Solana core engineers continue to address other issues with the Solana network, and have made progress in fees, reliability, speed, and decentralization. A good example is Firedancer, a validator client launched by Jump Crypto, the crypto investment arm of high-frequency trading giant Jump Trading, in collaboration with the Solana Foundation. It is built on the C++ programming language and is designed to coexist with Solana Labs' existing validator client based on the Rust programming language. Once deployed, Firedancer may help avoid the problem of Solana Labs' single client holding the majority of validator rights, and make it easier to make major upgrades to Solana's core open source software.
Although the market competition remains fierce, Solana has remained strong after the "blows", partly because they have always adhered to their vision. Raj Gokal and his team are also focused on providing services to Solana builders, while ensuring that Solana Labs and Solana Foundation continue to innovate, so that there is a lot of camaraderie and affection among builders, and even some people who have left the Solana team are still making suggestions to help the ecosystem become better.
It is worth mentioning that many Dapps are developed natively on Solana, so on-chain products are more sticky.
But now, the crypto community sees Solana in trouble and becomes aggressive. Maybe some people feel that Solana has betrayed the ideals of cryptocurrency, but some people may just worry that they will be surpassed by Solana. What I want to say is that if you look at the development path of Ethereum and other blockchains, you will understand that every ecosystem has flaws in the construction process, because we are all human... and we make mistakes.
So what really matters is, are you working to make things better? Are you learning from your mistakes? Are you relentlessly working to improve yourself and change the world? If you are, I fully support you, just like I support Solana.
But I feel disgusted for those who are suppressing Solana too much, especially seeing that some of them are from Ethereum. Have you forgotten how the "Bitcoin maximalists" humiliated you? Those who suppress SOL now are reminiscent of ETH in 2018. Although it was ridiculed, it inspired the Ethereum community. For Solana, the current suppression should be turned into a driving force for progress.
Finally, Placeholder VC is also a long-term supporter of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and has supported Cosmos and Solana since 2022, each blockchain provides a unique and valuable innovation ecosystem.
