Method:

I'll explore both blockchains on different topics and see how they fare against each other.

• What are they
• How public are they
• Similarities
• Language
• Fees
• Network Health
• Money behind

What are they

Solana

Is a public blockchain launched in 2015. Since the beginning Ethereum has functioned around Proof of Work as its consensus mechanism, which made the network robust and secure, but trading scalability in the process, making transaction times slow and highly expensive when the network is congested, even giving name to the "Gas Wars" that occurs. Transition to a Proof of Stake consensus is on the way but still not fully adopted.

It uses Solidity as language, which by some developers feels rusty, no pun intended, but it got a lot of traction to Ethereum. Ethereum is considered a pioneer in decentralized on-chain smart contracts.

Is a public blockchain launched in 2019. Powered by consensus mechanism called Proof of history making Solana highly scalable, reaching transactions as fast as 60k per second while maintaining low fees. It uses Rust as language. Which by developers when mastered feels years ahead on executability.

Ethereum

How public are they

Reported by Messari in May, 2021.

From their public allocations we can see that Ethereum's public participation is far greater than Solana's

Similarities

Languaje

Solana

Ethereum

Fees

Solana

Ethereum

Network Health

Solana

Ethereum

Money in the system

-Decentralized

• It could be argued that Solana is not as decentralized as Ethereum, in fact the same centralization could have caused problems in the past.

With Solidity being a object-oriented, statically-typed, high-level programming language, it was created specifically to work with EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), it allows to create applications with smart contracts that right now makes Ethereum the platform with the highest creation of decentralized applications.

Now his specialization makes it a bit niche on the programming side, but Ethereum is by no means a stagnant ecosystem.

The name is Rust launched in 2010. Is Statically-tiped, high-level general purpose programming language. The web consensus is that developers like it, a little hard to master but easier to use. And taking account how much adopted is Rust, is easier to jump on the developing side on Solana.

Speaking of Rust appreciations the 2021 stack survey puts Rust as the most loved language among developers.

• Open source
• Staking governance
• Borderless

Being a layer 1 chain with Proof of Work, Ethereum gas fees are high, they usually go around $20 and $70. It does lower when using layer 2 solutions, but it adds up to complexity and added failing points. This being one of the main discussed points against Ethereum, really slowing adoption.

Solana's efficient layer 1 Proof of History, allows for fast transactions at a really low cost, somewhat $0.00025. Really low.

• Solana has had problems before, in the past high transactions attacks have halt the network down. Being one of the most prominent issues with Solana as a not so decentralized network. You don`t need that many nodes to fall for it to halt.

• Also, Slashing. Solana doesn't have an automatic slashing mechanism, so when bad actors crash the network, they are punished by hand once restarted.

• Ethereum is secure, low scalability and all, but is safe. In the past The network has been attacked but the whole network has never gone offline. The number of validators and proof of work has battle-tested Ethereum as a resilient ecosystem.

• One of the way Ethereum ensure his participants behave is Slashing, where bad actors or lazy actors are punished for the misconduct. This could go from just negating rewards to losing ETH.

According to Defi Llama, not only Ethereum has the biggest TVL, also has more than 4x times the number of protocols in Solana.

Nonetheless, 6,29 billions in Total Value Locked, is not minor feat, and speaks of the trust in the system.

Which one then

Depends™

As we've seen there are concrete reasons to pick one or another, faster and cheaper blockchain or secure and solid, but slows as a turtle, blockchain.

But one thing that is worth to consider is that layer 2 solutions to Ethereum's problems are already taking place, and with Ethereum's vast dapps suite, it might be not too late to jump in the Ethereum Virtual Machine.