The crypto-verse witnessed the arrival of thousands of cryptocurrencies each claiming to be better than the previous asset. Despite being the largest cryptocurrencies by value and market cap, both Bitcoin [BTC] and Ethereum [ETH] had grave competition. ETH in particular saw the emergence of “Ethereum Killers” over the past couple of years. Solana [SOL] was considered to be one of them.
But why did Solana garner this name? The network was known for its speed and scalability which the Ethereum network somehow lacked. With Solana’s block time at 400ms, several jumped to this network considering ETH took 10 seconds. Similarly, an array of other reasons pushed the community to give the network the title “Ethereum killer.”
The co-founder of Solana Labs Anatoly Yakovenko, however, believed otherwise. He noted that Solana was in no way an Ethereum killer. Elaborating on the same he added,
“What’s funny to me is that people call Solana an Ethereum killer, but we’re so different.”
Yakovenko highlighted the fact that even though these networks are complementary the possibility of a multi-chain future was negated.
He further noted that both these chains were rather “almost complementary” in several ways. He also pointed out that the Solana network tracks its success against the Ethereum network sometimes. This, however, was limited to developer adoption. He stated,
“I think it’s really important because they are the market leader.”
It should be noted that the Solana network was a victim of numerous hacks and exploits over the last couple of months. Several suggested that this limited the network from taking over the ETH network.
Here’s why developers opt for Solana over Ethereum
As mentioned earlier the high-speed transactions and scalability give Solana leverage over the Ethereum network. Detailing the other factor that pushes people toward Solana, Yakovenko said,
“There are use cases that you can’t run on Ethereum that you can run on Solana, and this is where I start seeing devs really pick Solana over Ethereum.”
However, Solana still has a long way to go to take down the Ethereum network. Even in the DeFi space, ETH can be seen dominating the space accounting for more than half of the total value locked. Solana, however, accounts for a mere 1.73 percent.