🧬5 Reasons Why Solana Is Still Not a Global Backbone
Ethereum stands as the foundation of the new global financial system for both L2 and L1 applications, and no competitor has come close.
Despite recent efforts by Solana to position itself as a backbone, its structure and approach simply don’t allow it to fulfill this role.
Here are five reasons why Solana falls short compared to Ethereum:
1️⃣ Lack of Client Diversity
Solana only has one production client, making the network vulnerable to errors and attacks.
True decentralization requires at least three independent clients.
Ethereum already has four such clients, all operating effectively for years.
2️⃣ Extremely High Bandwidth Requirement
Solana requires a minimum of 10 Gbps upload speed — a figure hard to achieve outside major data centers.
A foundational network must be accessible worldwide, not just within data centers, to ensure reliability and decentralization.
3️⃣ Susceptibility to Outages
Solana has faced network halts, posing a serious risk for a global network handling trillions in assets.
Unlike Solana, Ethereum is designed to continue producing blocks even in the face of temporary issues.
4️⃣ Economic Centralization
98% of SOL tokens are held by insiders.
Ethereum, by contrast, sold 80% of its tokens publicly, and its Proof-of-Work mechanism distributed assets across a broad user base.
This level of centralization in Solana complicates its use as a global financial foundation.
5️⃣ zk-Proof Aggregation for L2
Through zk-aggregation, Ethereum can support thousands of L2/L3 networks while maintaining complete decentralization.
Solana, on the other hand, focuses on L1 scaling, which limits its potential in this role.
🧬 Conclusion: Solana Isn’t Ready for the Role of a Global Backbone
While Solana experiments with an “all-in-one” approach, Ethereum remains the top choice for building a scalable global network.
Its strategy as a decentralized foundation for countless L2 layers and applications perfectly aligns with the principles of a reliable.
