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

Source: Plain Language Blockchain

The crypto community has always had many different project branches, from the earliest Bitcoin hard forks, LTC, Doge and other "shanzhai", to the subsequent emergence of well-known factions such as Ethereum, EOS, and Solana. They represent the similarities and differences of ideologies and directions, with their respective ecosystems cooperating more often being attacked by each other due to differing viewpoints.

Due to Solana's good performance in this round, while Ethereum's performance is relatively mediocre, 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 like EOS, it means it is seen as facing an unfavorable outlook or entering a "bottomless abyss." So, which one 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 the most important goal of their technical solutions is to break the "impossible triangle" of blockchain, becoming a secure and reliable, as well as high-performance and 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 planned to shift to a scaling solution centered around Rollup Layer2, and certain progress has already been made.

Compared to Ethereum, Solana has more aggressively utilized "Proof of History" to achieve faster transaction confirmations. This consensus mechanism has achieved 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 some decentralization in the aggressive pursuit of extreme performance, which exposes some issues of node centralization. However, the difference is that Solana is gradually optimizing and upgrading after experiencing several unstable downtime incidents. In contrast, Ethereum's approach is considered more conservative, choosing a difficult and complex path in order not to sacrifice decentralization.

02 Sustainability

"A long road reveals a horse's strength, and time reveals a person's heart." In the ever-changing field of cryptocurrency, "survival" may be the most precious quality of a project. Many times, innovation also means not following the conventional 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 development community and an active ecosystem, with a real moat of practical applications such as DeFi concepts. Continuous innovation and ecosystem development have firmly established 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 subsequently revealed some sustainability issues, 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 impacts brought about by the collapse of major supporters SBF and FTX, as well as frequent outages, attacks, and other events. It has endured many hardships, but it has also exposed some stability and security issues, and its sustainability is facing tests.

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 is also the shadow of institutional capital behind it. The prosperity of the ecosystem cannot be achieved without the community, and the capital brought by institutions accelerates its progress.

At the beginning of its launch, EOS actually had widespread community consensus and also received substantial capital and institutional support. Its development company, Block.one, also invested a considerable amount of funds and resources. However, due to the 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 rest on their laurels with the enormous wealth in hand, effectively leaving the project to the community.

Due to the influence of the governance model and centralization issues, the community consensus of EOS has gradually weakened, and the confidence of supernodes and developers has gradually lost, and finally this is the result we see.

Compared to EOS, Solana has received relatively more support from Wall Street elites and capital, and its strong performance seems to have fostered a strong community consensus in the short term. The project team's leadership is also exceptionally active in the community, and with the relaxed state of U.S. crypto 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 its "Made in USA" identity, it continues to receive capital support.

Ethereum requires no further words on community and institutional support. As the second-largest crypto asset and the only two U.S. spot ETFs, 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 EOS, while Ethereum appears to be more stable. However, the "timing," "location," and "human resources" conditions differ for the three, and perhaps none of them are exactly like the others. Each will face different tests and challenges, following their own unique paths.

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