According to Ethereum community member Ryan Berkmans, Solana cannot serve as the backbone of the so-called “new” global financial system.
Solana (SOL) has moved from its original “monolithic” approach to recognizing the importance of layer 2 solutions. However, Berckmans points out in X that Solana initially pitched itself as being able to process global transactions on a single chain. This was before L2 solutions were rebranded as “network extensions” rather than being recognized as L2.
Solana increasingly embraced Ethereum’s (ETH) L2 backbone strategy after seeing flagship applications building custom L2 app chains on their networks.
This shift in perspective became more pronounced when the main Solana development team pivoted to building SVM L2 on Ethereum.
The Global Backbone Will Become One – Ethereum
Ethereum is the backbone of the new global financial system for L2 and L1 apps. No other chain can come close.
Mart suggested that Sol could pivot to Backbone. But Solana will never be the backbone. Here are five reasons why.
— Ryan Berckmans ryanb.eth (@ryanberckmans) October 26, 2024
There are some barriers in front of Solana.
Berkmans, who spent eight months as a senior engineer on the Augur project, a predictive platform on the Ethereum blockchain, identified barriers that are preventing Solana from becoming a global backbone.
First, Solana only works with one production client (agave Rust). A global backbone requires at least three independent chain clients with a balanced equity allocation, he says.
Development of the second client, Firedancer, has faced significant delays due to the lack of a suitable protocol specification and research community.
Solana’s high bandwidth requirements (10 Gbps upload recommended) create significant centralization risks and practical limitations.
This requirement specifically calls into question the concept of a global backbone that should be able to operate anywhere.
The platform’s outage history and lack of protocol-level fallback capabilities pose additional risks.
Unlike Ethereum, Solana does not have the ability to continue producing blocks when finalization issues occur, Berkmans said.
According to Bergmans, there is another big concern about centralizing the economy. Solana, whose initial coin offering has around 98% insider allocation compared to 80% public sales for Ethereum, faces questions about its true decentralization.
With the advent of ZK proof aggregation for L2 payments, Solana’s position is further called into question. Solana focuses on scaling L1 execution, but this approach conflicts with global backbone requirements.
Looking ahead, Berckmans predicts that Solana’s market share will continue to decline year over year compared to Ethereum’s L1 and L2 ecosystems combined. He cites major companies such as Coinbase, Kraken, Sony, and Visa choosing Ethereum L2 solutions as evidence of the market direction.
The analysis concludes that while Solana has shown strength in areas such as memecoin growth and price appreciation, fundamental limitations prevent it from functioning as the backbone of the global financial system.
