Which is more like EOS from back in the day, Ethereum or Solana?

Source: Plain Language Blockchain

The crypto community has always had numerous different project forks, from the earliest Bitcoin hard forks, LTC, Doge, and other "shanzhai" projects, to the later emergence of well-known factions like Ethereum, EOS, and Solana. They represent the similarities and differences in ideologies and directions, and while their ecosystems have collaborations, there is more mutual attack among communities due to differing viewpoints.

Due to Solana's good performance in this round, while Ethereum's performance is relatively disappointing, people in the Solana community say ETH is like EOS back in the day, while people in the Ethereum community retort that SOL is the one that resembles EOS. When a project is considered to be like EOS, it means it is seen as facing an unfavorable outlook or entering a "bottomless abyss." So, which is more like EOS, ETH or SOL? Today, let's analyze this from multiple perspectives...

01 Technical Route and Design Philosophy

Ethereum, Solana, and that year's EOS as underlying public chains, their most important goal of the technical solutions is to break the "impossible triangle" of blockchain, becoming a secure and reliable infrastructure with high performance and high scalability.

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. Currently, it has tentatively shifted to a scalability solution centered on the Rollup Layer2 hierarchy and has made certain progress.

Compared to Ethereum, Solana has more aggressively used "Proof of History" to achieve faster transaction confirmation. This consensus mechanism has achieved high performance and can handle a large number of transactions. Similarly, EOS, back in the day, also focused on 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 part of decentralization while aggressively pursuing extreme performance, exposing some issues of node centralization. However, the difference is that Solana is gradually optimizing and upgrading after experiencing several instabilities and downtime. In contrast, Ethereum's approach is considered more conservative, choosing a difficult and complex path in order not to sacrifice 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 rapidly changing field of cryptocurrency, "survival" may be the most valuable quality of a project. Many times, innovation also means taking unconventional paths, facing more risks and challenges.

Historically, Ethereum has withstood the test of "time", second only to the top crypto asset "Bitcoin". Currently, Ethereum still maintains the largest development community and an active ecosystem, with a real moat of practical applications such as DeFi concepts. Continuous innovation and ecosystem building have solidified its position as the "second" in crypto assets.

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 its main supporter SBF and FTX, as well as frequent outages and attacks. It has been through many trials, but it has also exposed some stability and security issues, and its sustainability is facing challenges.

Perhaps standing on the relatively 'failed' experience of EOS, the Ethereum and Solana communities will carefully 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 are also the shadows of institutional capital behind them. Ecological prosperity cannot be separated from the community, while the capital brought by institutions accelerates its progress.

In the early stages of its launch, EOS actually had widespread community consensus and received substantial capital and institutional support. Its development company, Block.one, also invested considerable funds and resources. However, under pressure from the U.S. 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 U.S. SEC, they chose to lay low with the enormous 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 gradually diminished, 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 the leadership of its project team is also unusually active in the community. Additionally, with the relaxed state of U.S. crypto regulation after Trump's administration, the Solana team will not face similar pressures. On the contrary, due to the popularity of concepts like Meme and its "Made in USA" identity, it continues to receive capital support.

Ethereum needs no words in terms of community and institutional support. As the second largest crypto asset, with 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 multiple important perspectives, on the surface, Solana seems more like a radical version of EOS, while Ethereum appears to be more stable. However, the conditions of "timing," "geography," and "people" are different for each of the three, perhaps none of them are like the others, and each will face different tests and challenges along their unique paths.

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