The big bad Ethereum Killer - Solana can't stay online.
Solana isn't looking so hot
Look, I'll go ahead and say this - I have never been a fan of Solana. I've never touched it and never plan to for many reasons. I remember the first time I heard about it, it was shilled to me as the "Ethereum Killer". Let's unpack what that means, because you can't just say you're gunna kill the OG smart contract blockchain and not back it up with something. Solana is advertised to have 400 millisecond block times and transactions less than 1 cent. It's supposedly decentralized and capable of 710,000 transactions per second, according to the official documentation.
To be fair, I think at least one of those statements is actually true, and that's cheap transactions. Everything else is highly debatable. So take those few details and compare it to Ethereum, you can see on paper which one is superior. But paper isn't what matters here. What really matters is that while Solana may be faster and cheaper - Ethereum actually fucking works. It's also highly decentralized and headed for a much brighter future with the next upgrade.
We're not here to talk about Ethereum though. Solana just went down for the 7th time this year. Yes, this year. Like the past 4 months.
Historically, since launch Solana has suffered a total of 11 complete network outages rendering the blockchain completely useless. This is not something anyone using cryptocurrency wants to have to deal with. Imagine if you're trying to make a sell or buy because you see a pump or dump coming... And you can't because the blockchain is halted. That's a horrible user experience.
Red flags flying high anyone? I've been skeptical of Solana as a whole since the beginning as I said. The founders hold a ton of tokens, the validators are highly centralized, and I just can't fathom such a system failing so hard so many times. We're not just talking about a major decentralized application launching and congesting the network 11 times. We're talking about just full on network outages for the most part cause by bad blockchain design.
As I said, Solana does look superior on paper, but at what cost? I could go on and on about the reasons I'd much rather trust the Ethereum blockchain over Solana, but I won't bore you with that. I'd much rather let people know about the issues with Solana and let you make your own decisions about which one is better. Would you rather pay higher fees or risk the whole chain being halted because someone mints a stupid NFT?
Also - there's a ton of other blockchains that are theoretically superior to Ethereum, technically speaking. Take Hive, for example. Free transactions and 3 second block times. Take WAX for example. Free transactions, one second block times. If you're really just looking at pure specs, there's many superior chains. What you can't see on paper is the network effect. This is the sheer number of users, the number of dapps, the amount of capital locked in the network, and even the community around it.
All I hear about in regard to Solana is NFT projects that are literally just profile picture JPEGs. I've never heard of a crazy DeFi app or any cool games being built on Solana. Maybe I've just had my blinders on, but I don't see major development happening over there. Just pay attention to what's going on around you. Solana is like that old car you pass on the side of the road going down the highway and wonder "what happened there"? lol
Remember kids - it's the wild west in crypto land. I'm not saying don't use Solana or that it's going to fail tomorrow. All I'm saying is... Watch your back and stay stay free.
Don't be sheep.
Thanks for reading! Much love.
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