Which is more like EOS of the past, Ethereum or Solana?

Source: Plain Language Blockchain

The crypto community has always had numerous branches of different projects, from the earliest Bitcoin hard forks, LTC, Doge and other "shanzhai" coins, to the subsequent emergence of well-known factions such as Ethereum, EOS, and Solana. They represent differences and similarities in ideologies and directions, and their respective ecosystems often collaborate, but more often than not, the communities attack each other due to differing viewpoints.

Due to Solana's good performance in this round, while Ethereum's performance is relatively mediocre, people in the Solana community say that ETH is like EOS back in the day, while people in the Ethereum community retaliate by saying SOL is the one that resembles EOS. When a project is considered like EOS, it means it is seen as facing an unfavorable outlook or entering a "bottomless abyss." So, which is more like EOS, ETH or SOL? Today, let's analyze it from multiple angles...

01 Technical Route and Design Concept

Ethereum, Solana, and that year's EOS serve as underlying public chains, and the most important goal of their technical solutions is to break the "impossible triangle" of Blockchain, becoming a secure, reliable, high-performance, and highly scalable infrastructure.

In terms of scalability solutions, Ethereum has chosen to transition from the POW consensus mechanism to a special POS consensus mechanism and plans to enhance network throughput in the future through sharding. It has currently tentatively shifted to a scalability solution centered around Rollup Layer 2 for expansion, and has already made some progress.

Compared to Ethereum, Solana more aggressively uses "Proof of History" to achieve faster transaction confirmations. This consensus mechanism enables high performance and can handle a large number of transactions. Similarly, EOS, which was also focused on high-performance blockchain back in the day, achieved extremely high throughput through the DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) consensus mechanism.

In terms of technical routes, Solana and EOS are more similar, both sacrificing some degree of decentralization in pursuit of extreme performance, exposing issues of node centralization. However, the difference is that Solana is gradually optimizing and upgrading after experiencing several unstable downtime incidents. In contrast, Ethereum's approach is considered more conservative, choosing a difficult and complex path in order not to sacrifice decentralization.

02 Sustainability

"The strength of a horse can be known after a long journey, and a person's heart can be seen over time." In the ever-changing world of cryptocurrency, "survival" may be the most precious quality of a project. Many times, innovation also means taking unconventional paths, facing more risks and challenges.

Historically, Ethereum has withstood the test of "time", second only to the leading crypto asset "Bitcoin". Currently, Ethereum still maintains the largest development community and an active ecosystem, with a real moat for concepts like DeFi that have practical applications. Continuous innovation and ecosystem development have solidified its position as the "second" in crypto assets.

EOS seems to have not withstood the test of time. EOS and its ecosystem had a period of glory, but then exposed some sustainability shortcomings, ultimately becoming sluggish. Whether it can "make a comeback" in the future remains uncertain.

Solana, which has a shorter history than EOS, has also experienced the adverse effects brought about by the collapse of major supporters SBF and FTX, as well as frequent outages, attacks, and other incidents. It can be considered as having endured many hardships, but it also exposes some stability and security issues, with sustainability facing challenges.

Perhaps standing on the relatively "failed" experience of EOS, the Ethereum and Solana communities will cautiously consider the issue of sustainability.

03 Community Support and Institutional Support

The development of encryption projects is always inseparable from the continuous support of the community, and of course, there is also the shadow of institutional capital behind it. Ecological prosperity cannot be separated from the community, and the capital brought by institutions accelerates its progress.

EOS had a broad community consensus at its initial launch and received substantial capital and institutional support. Its development company, Block.one, also invested a significant amount of funds and resources. However, pressured by the regulations imposed by the U.S. SEC, Block.one, as the project party, could not directly participate in the launch of the mainnet and the operation of the project. After settling the lawsuit with the U.S. SEC, they chose to lie low with their enormous wealth, effectively leaving the project to the community.

Due to the impact of governance models and centralization issues, the community consensus of EOS has gradually weakened, the confidence of supernodes and developers has been lost step by step, and ultimately, this is the result we see.

Compared to EOS, Solana has received relatively more support from Wall Street elites and capital, and its good performance seems to have garnered strong community consensus in the short term. The project team leadership is also unusually active in the community. Additionally, with the relaxed state of cryptocurrency regulation in the U.S. after Trump's rise to power, the Solana team does not face similar pressures. On the contrary, due to the popularity of concepts like Meme and the "Made in USA" identity, it continues to receive capital support.

Ethereum needs no further words regarding community and institutional support. As the second largest crypto asset, and the only two US stock spot ETFs, its ecosystem maturity and liquidity are significantly ahead, coupled with the project's sustainability advantages, its long-term attractiveness is expected to only increase.

04 Summary

Although we analyzed the similarities and differences between Ethereum, Solana, and EOS from several important perspectives, on the surface, Solana seems more like a radical version of EOS, while Ethereum appears to be more stable. However, the conditions of "timing," "location," and "human factors" are different for the three, and perhaps none resemble each other; they will each face different tests and challenges along their unique paths.

Everything will be proven by time. Under more favorable regulatory conditions, perhaps Ethereum, Solana, and other crypto projects can have a bright future.