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One interesting misrepresentation is this: “ Several innovations in distributed consensus design make Solana’s performance possible.” Solana’s consensus protoc

One interesting misrepresentation is this: “ Several innovations in distributed consensus design make Solana’s performance possible.” Solana’s consensus protocol isn’t responsible for its performance, it’s the fact that they mandate higher performing machine SKUs and at least 500Mbs (recommending 1Gbs) internet speeds. They also had to largely centralizing and have around 1000 validators. Ethereum’s fees and performance are due to a push for decentralization instead of cranking up the max gas per block to a level that wouldn’t be feasible for someone at home to run a node. I’m not sure why I’d use a blockchain that’s very close to being a centralized service. That’s the worst of both worlds, you don’t have censorship resistance you get with Ethereum and you don’t get the consumer protections you get with fully centralized services.

wmf 5y ago
1,000 validators is "centralized"? Don't look at how many Bitcoin pools there are.
- PretzelPirate 5y ago
  1000 validators is very centralized. All you have to do is bribe 2/3rds of them control the chain. This is on top of Solana not having slashing in place to punish bad behavior, and the Solana Foundation hosting validators for people who want to delegate. Solana’s 1000 validators may not even be owned by 1000 different entities, which reduces the attack difficulty. Solana scales through centralization, not new ideas in blockchain scalability. I don’t care how many Bitcoin mining pools there are. Mining pools are different than validators since they are made up of different individuals and not a single controlling entity. I also think PoW should die, and that’s all Bitcoin will ever support. Edit: if all we want is 1000 entities controlling our chain, we can choose 1000 well-known institutions (banks, libraries, etc…). That would be less vulnerable to bribes and random censoring (perhaps I censor txt if a Dapp that’s competing with my investments) than 1000-ish unknown entities running the chain without any slashing.
  - xmly 5y ago
    Solana and affiliated organizations probably owns 999 validators, that is my guess
    - latchkey 5y ago
      Solana and... EOS and... XRP...
      - xmly 5y ago
        But people seem not care that much about decentralization, as long as they could trade tokens.
        1ark 5y ago
        Usually this spectrum of decentralization is downplayed by all blockchains. When you look at their frontpage it's either not mentioned or hidden how it works, or how many nodes there are, how to become a node etc. Very dishonest and annoying. But the marketing and hype around the L1s overwhelms facts.
        latchkey 5y ago
        Or the people who care aren't the loudest people in the room.
  - lui8906 5y ago
    > 1000 validators is very centralized. All you have to do is bribe 2/3rds of them control the chain. The network can be halted when 1/3rd of the nodes collude. To my knowledge this allows you to halt the network but not reorg blocks or double spend. > Solana scales through centralization, not new ideas in blockchain scalability. Nonsense. They made different tradeoffs than Ethereum and a number of innovations were made possible by those different decisions. Source: https://medium.com/solana-labs/7-innovations-that-make-solana-the-first-web-scale-blockchain-ddc50b1defda https://medium.com/solana-labs/7-innovations-that-make-solan...
- latchkey 5y ago
  a) Pools don't do validation, bitcoin nodes do validation. b) It is easy for miners to switch to another pool in a matter of minutes. What do you do when you want a whole different set of Solana validators?
shiohime 5y ago
Personally as a user of both ecosystems I strongly prefer the speed of transactions and minimal fees on Solana, despite it being more centralized. I like EVM from a dev standpoint, but for most applications I want to use a financially practical and scalable L1 personally. There are some very solid products on Solana as well. I think that both are gonna be around for a long time regardless.
- PretzelPirate 5y ago
  The problem is that Solana is much easier to attack. Imagine running a business on Solana and all an attacker has to do is bribe 700 (or fewer) operators to give your competitors a advantage. Those attackers can’t even be punished by slashing their stake. Solana is attractive to everyday users because it’s cheap to use, but it’s security isn’t suitable for high-valued assets (even self-verifying the chain is expensive). They sacrificed security and censorship resistance for short-term low fees, but will suffer from the same scalability issues every other L1 will/has hit and will rely on rollups. Rollups with a highly-centralized base layer aren’t suitable. Even the ZKSync team has tweeted that using ZKSync on top of Solana is more secure than using Solana itself because the zero-knowledge proof will be validated by Ethereum.
  - shiohime 5y ago
    If you don't mind me asking, do you know of any good resources for learning more about the scalability solutions of Solana vs Ethereum? I've only been in the space for about 6 months as an engineer and almost every document I've read in regards to Solana scaling are sure that they will not encounter the same scalability issues that ETH has had. However, they are direct competitors so I wonder how biased these claims are sometimes, from both perspectives.
    - PretzelPirate 5y ago
      Here is a great article to read on why layer1 blockchain scalability isn’t sustainable long-term (for any layer 1): https://polynya.medium.com/why-rollups-data-shards-are-the-only-sustainable-solution-for-high-scalability-c9aabd6fbb48?source=user_profile---------2------------------------------- https://polynya.medium.com/why-rollups-data-shards-are-the-o... When reading about competing blockchains, it’s important to figure out if someone you’re reading values money or decentralization (and therefore individual’s digital autonomy once we enter the Metaverse). Polynya (Liberosist on Reddit) is in the same camp as me - we want the most permissionless, secure, and censorship resistant solution. As an Ethereum Dev recently put it they want to build in the MSIT secure, decentralized blockchain and as long as Ethereum is the only one providing that, they’ll keep building on Ethereum. It’s hard to understand which protocols are the most decentralized and secure because blockchains have gone from being built for decentralization, to being marketing machines. No one really writes about things like the importance of state receipts for blockchain validation, how many chains remove those due to the storage overhead, and how users lose a lot of self-reliance when that happens. I think they largely don’t write about it because most users nowadays just want to get rich and don’t care about decentralization, but I hope that changes and people realize that we need a neutral layer to store digital assets that we actually own as the Metaverse becomes a real part of our lives over the next 10-20 years.
lui8906 5y ago
> Solana’s consensus protocol isn’t responsible for its performance, it’s the fact that they mandate higher performing machine SKUs and at least 500Mbs (recommending 1Gbs) internet speeds. While it's true that Solana nodes have higher requirements than Ethereum full nodes (though not sure about validators?) I think it's incorrect to say that Solana's consensus protocol is not responsible for the high performance performance. Solana's consensus protocol (Tower BFT) works tightly with Proof of History. These two elements coupled together allow that the validator leader can be rotated asynchronously allowing performance increases in block propagation, throughput and ledger storage. Have you really had a good read of how Solana works? For eg. Sealevel allows for parallel contract execution, something which to my knowledge no other chain is capable of. All these innovations combined with the higher node requirements allow for TPS that no other chain is even close to and the Ethereum Modular vision will not achieve for quite some time (assuming it works). > They also had to largely centralizing and have around 1000 validators. Not sure what you're pointing to here. There was 600 validators a few months ago. Now there is 1000. 2000 additional validators are on devnet and would likely go onto mainnet in the coming months. How else should a blockchain decentralize then to add additional validators and try and spread the delegated stake around to reduce the number of nodes required to halt the network? The fact that Solana went down for 17 hours not too long ago and there was nothing Solana labs could do to bring it back shows the validators are not run by themselves. > Ethereum’s fees and performance are due to a push for decentralization instead of cranking up the max gas per block to a level that wouldn’t be feasible for someone at home to run a node. Ethereum's fees are due to its wild success + it's very low TPS on the L1 because it was more or less the first of its kind. Subsequent chains like Solana have made thousands of small or large alternative engineering decisions that in sum allow for much higher throughput and lower fees. Solana doesn't use gas, perhaps you're thinking of BSC or AVAX?
- undefuser 5y ago
  Could you provide some pointers to resources that explain clearly how Solana's consensus protocol and its Proof of History work? I read the whitepaper, watched a couple of videos but still find it unclear. As some other people said, it is not different from Bitcoin's mechanism with difficulty of zero.

wmf 5y ago

1,000 validators is "centralized"? Don't look at how many Bitcoin pools there are.

PretzelPirate 5y ago
1000 validators is very centralized. All you have to do is bribe 2/3rds of them control the chain. This is on top of Solana not having slashing in place to punish bad behavior, and the Solana Foundation hosting validators for people who want to delegate. Solana’s 1000 validators may not even be owned by 1000 different entities, which reduces the attack difficulty. Solana scales through centralization, not new ideas in blockchain scalability. I don’t care how many Bitcoin mining pools there are. Mining pools are different than validators since they are made up of different individuals and not a single controlling entity. I also think PoW should die, and that’s all Bitcoin will ever support. Edit: if all we want is 1000 entities controlling our chain, we can choose 1000 well-known institutions (banks, libraries, etc…). That would be less vulnerable to bribes and random censoring (perhaps I censor txt if a Dapp that’s competing with my investments) than 1000-ish unknown entities running the chain without any slashing.
- xmly 5y ago
  Solana and affiliated organizations probably owns 999 validators, that is my guess
  - latchkey 5y ago
    Solana and... EOS and... XRP...
    - xmly 5y ago
      But people seem not care that much about decentralization, as long as they could trade tokens.
      - 1ark 5y ago
        Usually this spectrum of decentralization is downplayed by all blockchains. When you look at their frontpage it's either not mentioned or hidden how it works, or how many nodes there are, how to become a node etc. Very dishonest and annoying. But the marketing and hype around the L1s overwhelms facts.
      - latchkey 5y ago
        Or the people who care aren't the loudest people in the room.
- lui8906 5y ago
  > 1000 validators is very centralized. All you have to do is bribe 2/3rds of them control the chain. The network can be halted when 1/3rd of the nodes collude. To my knowledge this allows you to halt the network but not reorg blocks or double spend. > Solana scales through centralization, not new ideas in blockchain scalability. Nonsense. They made different tradeoffs than Ethereum and a number of innovations were made possible by those different decisions. Source: https://medium.com/solana-labs/7-innovations-that-make-solana-the-first-web-scale-blockchain-ddc50b1defda https://medium.com/solana-labs/7-innovations-that-make-solan...
latchkey 5y ago
a) Pools don't do validation, bitcoin nodes do validation. b) It is easy for miners to switch to another pool in a matter of minutes. What do you do when you want a whole different set of Solana validators?

shiohime 5y ago

Personally as a user of both ecosystems I strongly prefer the speed of transactions and minimal fees on Solana, despite it being more centralized. I like EVM from a dev standpoint, but for most applications I want to use a financially practical and scalable L1 personally. There are some very solid products on Solana as well. I think that both are gonna be around for a long time regardless.

PretzelPirate 5y ago
The problem is that Solana is much easier to attack. Imagine running a business on Solana and all an attacker has to do is bribe 700 (or fewer) operators to give your competitors a advantage. Those attackers can’t even be punished by slashing their stake. Solana is attractive to everyday users because it’s cheap to use, but it’s security isn’t suitable for high-valued assets (even self-verifying the chain is expensive). They sacrificed security and censorship resistance for short-term low fees, but will suffer from the same scalability issues every other L1 will/has hit and will rely on rollups. Rollups with a highly-centralized base layer aren’t suitable. Even the ZKSync team has tweeted that using ZKSync on top of Solana is more secure than using Solana itself because the zero-knowledge proof will be validated by Ethereum.
- shiohime 5y ago
  If you don't mind me asking, do you know of any good resources for learning more about the scalability solutions of Solana vs Ethereum? I've only been in the space for about 6 months as an engineer and almost every document I've read in regards to Solana scaling are sure that they will not encounter the same scalability issues that ETH has had. However, they are direct competitors so I wonder how biased these claims are sometimes, from both perspectives.
  - PretzelPirate 5y ago
    Here is a great article to read on why layer1 blockchain scalability isn’t sustainable long-term (for any layer 1): https://polynya.medium.com/why-rollups-data-shards-are-the-only-sustainable-solution-for-high-scalability-c9aabd6fbb48?source=user_profile---------2------------------------------- https://polynya.medium.com/why-rollups-data-shards-are-the-o... When reading about competing blockchains, it’s important to figure out if someone you’re reading values money or decentralization (and therefore individual’s digital autonomy once we enter the Metaverse). Polynya (Liberosist on Reddit) is in the same camp as me - we want the most permissionless, secure, and censorship resistant solution. As an Ethereum Dev recently put it they want to build in the MSIT secure, decentralized blockchain and as long as Ethereum is the only one providing that, they’ll keep building on Ethereum. It’s hard to understand which protocols are the most decentralized and secure because blockchains have gone from being built for decentralization, to being marketing machines. No one really writes about things like the importance of state receipts for blockchain validation, how many chains remove those due to the storage overhead, and how users lose a lot of self-reliance when that happens. I think they largely don’t write about it because most users nowadays just want to get rich and don’t care about decentralization, but I hope that changes and people realize that we need a neutral layer to store digital assets that we actually own as the Metaverse becomes a real part of our lives over the next 10-20 years.

lui8906 5y ago

> Solana’s consensus protocol isn’t responsible for its performance, it’s the fact that they mandate higher performing machine SKUs and at least 500Mbs (recommending 1Gbs) internet speeds. While it's true that Solana nodes have higher requirements than Ethereum full nodes (though not sure about validators?) I think it's incorrect to say that Solana's consensus protocol is not responsible for the high performance performance. Solana's consensus protocol (Tower BFT) works tightly with Proof of History. These two elements coupled together allow that the validator leader can be rotated asynchronously allowing performance increases in block propagation, throughput and ledger storage. Have you really had a good read of how Solana works? For eg. Sealevel allows for parallel contract execution, something which to my knowledge no other chain is capable of. All these innovations combined with the higher node requirements allow for TPS that no other chain is even close to and the Ethereum Modular vision will not achieve for quite some time (assuming it works). > They also had to largely centralizing and have around 1000 validators. Not sure what you're pointing to here. There was 600 validators a few months ago. Now there is 1000. 2000 additional validators are on devnet and would likely go onto mainnet in the coming months. How else should a blockchain decentralize then to add additional validators and try and spread the delegated stake around to reduce the number of nodes required to halt the network? The fact that Solana went down for 17 hours not too long ago and there was nothing Solana labs could do to bring it back shows the validators are not run by themselves. > Ethereum’s fees and performance are due to a push for decentralization instead of cranking up the max gas per block to a level that wouldn’t be feasible for someone at home to run a node. Ethereum's fees are due to its wild success + it's very low TPS on the L1 because it was more or less the first of its kind. Subsequent chains like Solana have made thousands of small or large alternative engineering decisions that in sum allow for much higher throughput and lower fees. Solana doesn't use gas, perhaps you're thinking of BSC or AVAX?

undefuser 5y ago
Could you provide some pointers to resources that explain clearly how Solana's consensus protocol and its Proof of History work? I read the whitepaper, watched a couple of videos but still find it unclear. As some other people said, it is not different from Bitcoin's mechanism with difficulty of zero.