Devcon Clip: Does Ethereum See Solana as Competition?
Does Ethereum see Solana as a competitor? This was one of the big questions during the panel discussion, “‘Unified Ethereum’ vs ‘L2 Ecosystem Competition’: Can We Have Both?” featuring top leaders and builders within the Ethereum ecosystem.
- The panel discussion is part of Devcon Week 2024’s main event, the Devcon Southeast Asia 2024, which happened from November 12 to 15 in Bangkok, Thailand.
In Focus: “‘Unified Ethereum’ vs ‘L2 Ecosystem Competition’: Can We Have Both?” talked about the “frenemy” dynamic between competing L2 ecosystems, and how this can lead to a fragmented user experience. There was also a question and answer part where it was asked. The panelists were:
- Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of major blockchain giant Ethereum.
- Ben Jones, the co-founder of Optimism, a known layer two (L2) for Ethereum.
- Hart Lambur, the co-founder of Risk Labs, the foundation behind the Across and UMA Protocols on Ethereum.
- Steven Goldfeder, the co-founder and CEO of Offchain Labs, a contributor to Arbitrum, an L2 scaling solution on Ethereum.
- Jesse Pollak, the VP for Engineering at Coinbase and the Creator of Base, a decentralized Ethereum L2 incubated by Coinbase.
Recent News: In the Philippines, Solana is searched more compared to Ethereum, based on PH Google Trends data from September 21 to October 21, 2024.
The following excerpt from the panel discussion shows the panelists’ answers on whether they see Solana as a competitor to Ethereum.
Panel Discussion: Does Ethereum See Solana as Competitor?
Hart Lambur, Co-Founder, Risk Labs: Okay, I’ll answer this. Solana—look, I’m not a Solana hater at all. I think Solana does Ethereum a service by showing another way, right? And we should actually, honestly, learn from that, respect it, and compete.
Competition is a beautiful thing. My take here is that, after Danksharding with blobs, any individual L2 has a Solana-like experience. It’s fast and cheap, like Solana, and it’s beautiful.
How’s that, right? That’s these guys—Jesse, Steven, Ben—they’ve got a Solana-like experience too. The problem is there are too many of them now, and we’ve got to unify them.
Is it a competitor? Sure, but I think Ethereum has way more scale, thanks to its rollup-centric roadmap.
Steven Goldfeder, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Offchain Labs: I just want to echo that competition point. I’m super happy Solana exists because it really pushes us to ask, “How do we get these good features of Solana without compromising what we see as essential?” That’s always important. Competition is important.
I’m also super happy Optimism exists because Arbitrum wouldn’t be as awesome as it is today if nothing was pushing us to be competitive. And I’m sure that’s a two-way street too.
I love competition within the ecosystem, and I think we, as Ethereum, are lucky to have competitors. But we’re still better than our competitors.
Vitalik Buterin, Co-Founder, Ethereum: One other thing I want to say about competition is that we shouldn’t just be thinking about competition within the blockchain world. SEPA is competition. The credit card system is competition. That new BRICS Pay thing that got announced a week or two ago is competition. The centralized world is moving forward, and blockchain has to stay cheaper than Bitcoin. Arguments that were very easy to make back in 2012 are much harder to make today. And the world is moving forward now, right?
The range of things we have to think about for decentralization and privacy has expanded—10 years ago it was websites, and now we’re talking about AI, and in 20 years, we might be talking about reading our minds. So, you know, the world is moving forward, and we absolutely have to move forward to keep up.
Jesse Pollak, VP for Engineering, Coinbase: Alright, I’m just going to give a strong plus one to that. Off-chain is competition, and on-chain, we’re building together. It’s time to build a global on-chain economy, so let’s fucking build.
You can watch and listen to the full panell discussion in the video below:
Keep reading on BitPinas for interviews with the people who move the crypto industry in the Philippines forward.
This article is published on BitPinas: Devcon Clip: Does Ethereum See Solana as Competition?
What else is happening in Crypto Philippines and beyond?
