Comparison of Stake Amounts between Solana and Ethereum: Network Security Analysis

Recently, there has been a viewpoint that the network security of Solana may have surpassed that of Ethereum, as its staking volume has exceeded that of Ethereum. However, this statement may be misleading. Let us delve into this issue through some data.

Currently, the staking amount of Ethereum is approximately 34M ETH, worth around 61 billion dollars; the staking amount of Solana is 388M SOL, worth about 58.7 billion dollars. In terms of numbers, both have indeed reached a similar level. Considering that the PoS mechanism attack threshold for both networks is around 33%, on the surface, their theoretical attack difficulty seems comparable.

However, in terms of actual operational difficulty, attacking Ethereum is far more difficult than attacking Solana. This is mainly reflected in two aspects: node centralization and the maturity of staking infrastructure.

Node Centralization

Assume an extreme situation: hackers successfully infiltrate the data center of a major cloud service provider by exploiting advanced vulnerabilities. In this case:

• Controlling over 50% of the Solana network requires simultaneously mastering the top 43 nodes, which is difficult but not entirely impossible.
• For Ethereum, since a single node can stake a maximum of 32 ETH, an attacker would need to control 1.187 million nodes, which is nearly an impossible task.

Even considering that an entity may operate multiple nodes, according to data from the Rated platform, all registered Ethereum node operators combined account for only 47.5% of the total stake, which does not even reach the 50% threshold.

The reason for this difference is that Ethereum, as an earlier public chain, has experienced real PoS attack threats, and therefore has made adequate preparations to prevent such potential risks, such as encouraging retail investors to participate in stake.

The 32 ETH staking threshold for Ethereum is relatively low, whereas Solana has high requirements for servers, with monthly operating costs being 5 to 10 times that of Ethereum. This means that retail investors in Solana need to stake at least 10,000 SOL to break even, and the yield may even be lower than that of some staking service providers.

Maturity of Staking Infrastructure

Many staking infrastructure providers in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as Lido and Obol Collective, have done a lot of work to improve network security:

• Lido requires node operators to reduce the use of mainstream cloud services and increase the use of niche data centers; at the same time, it encourages support for diverse clients. In addition, Lido has also specifically allocated 4% of ETH to support the development of distributed validator technology (DVT) infrastructure.

• The DVT technology developed by Obol allows multiple entities to jointly manage a node. For example, a 3/4 threshold node can be set up with 4 people managing it, so even if one node goes offline, the other nodes can immediately take over. This mechanism greatly enhances the network's fault tolerance and security.

It is worth noting that in Ethereum and most PoS networks, nodes going offline is also considered a "malicious" act. If 33% of the nodes go offline, the entire network could be paralyzed. Obol's technology achieves cluster management at the client level, and private key shards are not uploaded to the blockchain, thereby further enhancing security.

Currently, there is no similar infrastructure specifically targeting stake security in the Solana ecosystem.

Conclusion

Although Solana and Ethereum are close in terms of the scale of staked funds, Ethereum still has a slight edge in network security due to differences in the degree of decentralization of node distribution and the maturity of staking infrastructure. However, it is important to emphasize that both networks have high security, and the probability of a successful attack is extremely low. With the continuous development of technology, both networks are continuously improving their security and performance.