Will Solana Surpass Ethereum?

At the end of a recent article, a reader left a message:

Can Ethereum still rise? I see a view that EOS is better than ETH, and now more and more people think that SOL has surpassed ETH.

Indeed, in this round of inscription boom, Solana’s popularity has risen very quickly, and even the price of the currency has soared like a rocket.

Compared with Solana's performance, Ethereum is a bit embarrassed. Speaking of participating in inscriptions, Ethereum is actually a little later than Bitcoin. In my impression, it is the second public chain to be inscribed. Solana is even later than Ethereum. But despite being so late, once it entered the inscription ecosystem, its community quickly became active, allowing it to quickly catch up in popularity through the inscription ecosystem.

In addition to inscriptions, the recent topics and aspirations about DePIN have also made Solana popular.

It is precisely because of the rapid grasp of these hot spots that Solana currently seems to have the momentum to surpass Ethereum.

But in the long run and fundamentally, I think the possibility of Solana surpassing Ethereum is very small.

Why?

I think there are two key points:

The first one is another point I have always made: in terms of decentralization, Solana cannot compare with Ethereum at all.

Many people think this characteristic is very vague and have nothing to do with the performance and long-term development of a blockchain ecosystem. Therefore, many people do not care about it at all, and even think it is too outdated to mention it now.

But in fact, this trait is very important and it will play a decisive role in some key issues.

I still want to emphasize that as the infrastructure that carries all applications, the decentralization of the blockchain public chain is unquestionable, because it guarantees the neutrality and security of the infrastructure. Only when the infrastructure is neutral and secure can it accommodate all applications and ecosystems, be fair and just, and be inclusive and create miracles.

To some extent, this is the same as when people start a business or invest in an environment:

Some ecosystems are monopolized by a few people, and they seem to be very efficient and fast, but their policies may change at any time, or even make a 180-degree turn. Some ecosystems are relatively legal and fair, and they seem to be very inefficient and slow, but their fundamental direction and policies will not change.

Normally, people may not be able to see the fundamental difference in characteristics between the two ecosystems. But once the first ecosystem, which is monopolized by a few people, suddenly makes a 180-degree turn under certain circumstances, all entrepreneurs and investors in it will immediately realize the fundamental problems of this ecosystem, and will leave this ecosystem without looking back to embrace the relatively legal and fair ecosystem.

And this departure is probably forever and everlasting.

Once this extreme situation occurs, everyone will immediately realize: If you plan to start a business and invest in the long term, you should still choose an ecosystem that seems relatively inefficient and slow but is relatively legal and fair.

This is the difference between decentralized Ethereum and centralized Solana.

After this round of SOL price surge, someone put forward this view:

Solana is backed by Wall Street, and Wall Street will definitely support Solana.

From this point of view, it seems that with the power of the consortium, such a centralized system can create miracles and allow a centralized system to stand in a decentralized ecosystem.

I don't agree with this view.

From this point of view, it still believes in big conglomerates, big capital and big institutions.

Apart from anything else, the rise of this round of inscription ecology has once again shown us the power of the community and retail investors. This is not the first time that the community and retail investors have created miracles. In the development of the crypto world to this day, after witnessing the miracles created by communities and retail investors one after another, there are still people who are so superstitious about those monopolists.

Note: I am not saying that those monopolists are not important, but that in the crypto world, their importance is not that excessive and they are not worth worshipping.

Institutions and monopolists are profit-seeking, and they will rush to whichever ecosystem will bring long-term and stable returns. Even if they support an ecosystem, if it does not develop well in the future, they will still ruthlessly abandon it.

So in the end, it all comes down to whether an ecosystem can develop well. And whether an ecosystem can develop well is definitely not determined by capital alone. So this view overvalues ​​capital and ignores other more important factors.

The second key point is that Ethereum is still the most powerful in terms of ecology and developers, and the role of smart contracts cannot be replaced.

As for Ethereum's ecosystem and developers, I believe everyone has already seen it, so there is no need for me to elaborate.

The topic of smart contracts being irreplaceable does not seem to be discussed much.

In this round of craze, although inscription has emerged as a new technology, it still has a fundamental problem: that is, if inscription wants to realize the functions of expansion and contract, it is likely to be done offline.

Take Bitcoin inscription as an example. To realize the functions of extension and contract, it must either be a second-layer extension or use a method similar to the indexer. The second-layer extension returns to the smart contract. However, the indexer now has the security risk of centralization. To solve this risk, I am afraid that a solution similar to blockchain will be needed in the end.

Therefore, no matter how inscriptions develop, they can never replace smart contracts. Once we return to smart contracts, Ethereum’s monopoly position will be difficult to challenge.

In fact, there are many Bitcoin extensions and contract solutions that transfer inscriptions across chains to Ethereum for various operations.

So overall, it is normal for Solana to have such popularity given the current hot spots, but in the long run I don’t think it will surpass Ethereum.