Which is more like the EOS of the past, Ethereum or Solana?

Source: Vernacular Blockchain

The crypto community has always had numerous branches of different projects, from the earliest Bitcoin hard forks, LTC, Doge, and other "shanzhai" coins, to the later emergence of well-known factions such as Ethereum, EOS, and Solana. They represent the similarities and differences in ideology and direction, and their respective ecosystems often see cooperation, but more often engage in mutual attacks due to differing viewpoints among communities.

Due to Solana's good performance this round, while Ethereum's performance is relatively lackluster, people in the Solana community say ETH is like EOS in its heyday, while people in the Ethereum community retort that SOL is the one that resembles EOS. When a project is considered similar to EOS, it means it is perceived to be facing an unfavorable outlook, or entering a "bottomless abyss." So, which is more like EOS, ETH or SOL? Today, let's dissect this from multiple angles...

01 Technical Route and Design Philosophy

Ethereum, Solana, and the EOS of that year serve as underlying public chains, and their most important goal in their technical solutions is to break the "impossible triangle" of blockchain, becoming a secure, reliable, high-performance, and highly scalable infrastructure.

In terms of scalability 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. It is currently tentatively shifting to a scalability solution centered around Rollup Layer2 for expansion, and has already made some progress.

Compared to Ethereum, Solana more aggressively uses "Proof of History" to achieve faster transaction confirmations. This consensus mechanism enables high performance and can handle a large number of transactions. Similarly, EOS, back in the day, also focused on being a high-performance blockchain, achieving extremely high throughput through the DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) consensus mechanism.

In terms of technology, Solana and EOS are more similar, both sacrificing a portion of decentralization in pursuit of extreme performance, which exposes some issues related to node centralization. However, the difference is that Solana is gradually undergoing optimization and upgrades after experiencing several instances of instability and downtime. In contrast, Ethereum's approach 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, "surviving" may be the most valuable quality of a project. Many times, innovation also means taking the road less traveled, facing more risks and challenges.

Historically, Ethereum has withstood the test of "time", second only to the king of crypto assets, "Bitcoin". Currently, Ethereum still maintains the largest development community and a vibrant ecosystem, with a real moat of applications like DeFi, and its 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 had a period of glory, but then exposed some sustainability shortcomings, ultimately becoming sluggish. 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 brought about by the collapse of major supporters SBF and FTX, as well as frequent downtime, attacks, and other incidents. It can be considered battle-tested, but it has also exposed some stability and security issues, and its sustainability is facing a test.

Perhaps standing on the relatively "failed" experiences of EOS, the Ethereum and Solana communities will carefully consider the issue of sustainability.

03 Community Support and Institutional Support

The development of cryptocurrency 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 do without the community, and the capital brought by institutions accelerates its progress.

EOS initially had broad community consensus and received substantial capital and institutional support, with its development company Block.one also investing significant funds and resources. However, due to pressure from US SEC regulations, 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 US SEC, they chose to lie flat with the massive wealth they held, effectively leaving the project to the community.

Due to the impact of governance models and centralization issues, the community consensus of EOS has gradually weakened, the confidence of super nodes and developers has been gradually lost, and ultimately we see this result.

Compared to EOS, Solana has received relatively more support from Wall Street elites and capital. Its good performance seems to have garnered strong community consensus in the short term, and its project team leadership is also exceptionally active in the community. Furthermore, with the relaxed state of U.S. cryptocurrency regulation after Trump's administration, the Solana team does not face similar pressures. On the contrary, due to the popularity of concepts like Meme and the "Made in USA" identity, it continues to receive sustained capital support.

Ethereum needs no introduction when it comes to community and institutional support, as the second largest crypto asset and the only two spot ETFs in the US stock market, its ecosystem maturity and liquidity are significantly ahead, coupled with the project's sustainability advantages, its long-term attractiveness is expected to only increase.

04 Summary

Although we have analyzed the similarities and differences between Ethereum, Solana, and EOS from several important perspectives, on the surface Solana appears to be more like a radical version of EOS, while Ethereum seems to be more stable. However, the conditions of 'timing', 'geography', and 'human factors' are different for each, and perhaps none resemble the others. Each will face different tests and challenges along their unique paths.

Everything will be proven over time. Under more favorable regulatory conditions, perhaps cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Solana can have a bright future.