According to Blockworks, the ongoing debate between monolithic and modular blockchain scaling methods has intensified. Ethereum advocate Polynya recently published an essay critiquing monolithic blockchains, which many interpreted as a veiled critique of Solana. Solana's native crypto asset (SOL) has experienced a significant price surge, with a market cap approaching $25 billion. Despite its high transaction speed and low fees, Solana has faced criticism for network instability and high hardware requirements for validating nodes.
Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, acknowledged some network flaws but argued that the Solana community has worked diligently to mitigate them. Yakovenko compared these challenges to historical issues faced by other major networks like Ethereum and Bitcoin. Solana plans to launch Firedancer, its first independent validator client software, in mid-2024, which is expected to increase throughput to as much as a million transactions per second (TPS) in the future. Yakovenko believes that the natural growth in computing power and falling hardware costs will handle Solana's needs effectively.
Polynya's essay also advocates for advanced technologies like validity proofs and data availability sampling to address scaling demands. Solana developer Mert Mumtaz, CEO at Helius and co-host of Blockworks' Lightspeed podcast, responded that Solana could embrace both vertical and horizontal scaling. The debate ultimately revolves around the question of what is the purpose of using a blockchain and how to achieve global scale while maintaining decentralization and security.
