Source: Plainspoken Blockchain
The crypto community has always had many different project branches, from the earliest Bitcoin hard forks, LTC, Doge, and other “copycats,” to the later emergence of well-known factions like Ethereum, EOS, and Solana. They represent the similarities and differences in ideas and directions, with their respective ecosystems collaborating more, but often attacking each other due to differing viewpoints.
Due to Solana's good performance in this round, while Ethereum's performance is relatively unsatisfactory, people in the Solana community say ETH is like EOS from back in the day, while people in the Ethereum community retort that SOL is the one that resembles EOS. When a project is considered like EOS, it means it is perceived to face a bleak outlook or is entering a “bottomless abyss.” So, which is more like EOS, ETH or SOL? Today, let's take a look from multiple angles…
01 Technical Route and Design Philosophy
Ethereum, Solana, and the EOS of that year serve as underlying public chains, and the most important goal of their technical solutions is to break the “impossible triangle” of blockchain, becoming a secure, reliable, and high-performance, highly scalable infrastructure.
In terms of scaling solutions, Ethereum has chosen to transition from the POW consensus mechanism to a special POS consensus mechanism and plans to enhance network throughput in the future through sharding. Currently, it is tentatively shifting to a scaling solution centered around the Rollup Layer 2 hierarchy, and it has already made some progress.
Compared to Ethereum, Solana aggressively uses “Proof of History” to achieve faster transaction confirmations. This consensus mechanism enables high performance, capable of handling a large number of transactions. Similarly, EOS at that time also focused on being a high-performance blockchain, achieving extremely high throughput through the DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) consensus mechanism.
In terms of technical direction, Solana and EOS are more similar, both sacrificing some decentralization in the pursuit of extreme performance, exposing some issues of node centralization. However, the difference is that Solana is gradually optimizing and upgrading after experiencing several unstable downtime incidents. Ethereum's solution is considered more conservative, choosing a difficult and complex path to avoid sacrificing decentralization.
02 Sustainability
“The strength of a horse can be known over a long distance, and a person's heart can be seen over time.” In the ever-changing field of cryptocurrency, “survival” might be the most valuable trait of a project. Many times, innovation also means taking an unconventional path, facing more risks and challenges.
Historically, Ethereum has withstood the test of “time” and challenges, second only to the crypto asset leader “Bitcoin”. Currently, Ethereum still maintains the largest developer community and an active ecosystem, with a real moat of applications like DeFi, and continuous innovation and ecosystem development keep it firmly in the position of the “second” crypto asset.
EOS seems to have not withstood the test of time. EOS and its ecosystem enjoyed a period of glory, but subsequently exposed some sustainability shortcomings, ultimately becoming stagnant. Whether it can “make a comeback” in the future remains uncertain.
Solana, which has a shorter history than EOS, has also experienced the adverse effects of the collapse of its major supporter SBF and FTX, as well as frequent outages, attacks, and other incidents. It can be considered to have weathered many trials, but it has also exposed some stability and security issues, and its sustainability is facing a test.
Perhaps standing on the relatively “failed” experience of EOS, the Ethereum and Solana communities will cautiously consider the issue of sustainability.
03 Community Support and Institutional Support
The development of crypto projects is always inseparable from the continuous support of the community, and of course, there is also the shadow of institutional capital behind it. A thriving ecosystem cannot exist without the community, and the capital brought by institutions accelerates its progress.
EOS initially had widespread community consensus and received substantial capital and institutional support at its launch. Its development company, Block.one, also invested considerable funds and resources. However, under pressure from the regulatory scrutiny of the U.S. SEC, Block.one, as the project party, could not directly participate in the launch of the mainnet and the operation of the project. After settling the lawsuit with the U.S. SEC, they chose to lay low with their enormous wealth, essentially leaving the project to the community.
Due to the impact of governance models and centralization issues, the community consensus of EOS has gradually weakened, with supernodes and developers gradually losing confidence, leading to the result we see now.
Compared to EOS, Solana has received relatively more support from Wall Street elites and capital. Its good performance seems to have garnered a strong community consensus in the short term, and its project team leadership is also exceptionally active in the community. Additionally, with the relaxed state of U.S. crypto regulation after Trump's rise to power, the Solana team is not under similar pressure. On the contrary, because of the popularity of concepts like Meme and its “Made in USA” identity, it has received continuous capital support.
Ethereum needs no introduction when it comes to community and institutional support. As the second-largest cryptocurrency and one of only two spot ETFs in the US stock market, its ecosystem maturity and liquidity are significantly ahead, and with the advantage of project sustainability, its long-term appeal is expected to only increase.
04 Summary
Although we analyzed the similarities and differences between Ethereum, Solana, and EOS from multiple important perspectives, on the surface, Solana resembles a more radical version of EOS, while Ethereum appears to be more stable. However, the “timing,” “location,” and “human factors” differ for each of the three, and perhaps none of them are like the others; each will face different tests and challenges along their own unique paths.
Everything will be proven by time. Under more favorable regulatory conditions, perhaps cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Solana will have a bright future.
