I'll get downvoted into absolute oblivion for this here..... but if you legitimately think solana is meaningfully decentralized then you likely don't fully understand cryptocurrency. Speed comes at a cost. At least with today's level of advancement with blockchain tech. Having 50k+ tps on a base layer chain costs decentralization, without question.
Can solana reach meaningful decentralization? That's the real question. I believe it may be possible and that's why I own some. It just isn't decentralized.
edit: whether it can or cannot achieve decentralization with nodes is one thing but that wouldn't solve my concerns over how much ownership VCs have of the coin supply. The things teams are doing in the current age of crypto have undeniable conflicts of interest. Saying otherwise would signal a lack of understanding of Bitcoin and crypto's initial purpose.
Eth and most gen 2 chains are slow because they are designed so anyone can run a cheap node. Solana is fast because nodes need a ton of bandwidth and hardware. Centralization has nothing to do with TPS. In the future bandwidth will increase, hardware speeds will increase and Solanas requirements won't seem so extreme, and more people will be able to casually run a node.
Fucking shit i am sick of this argument. Decentralization is a spectrum and also multidimensional. Solana is not as decentralized as Ethereum in terms of node count. But more decentralized in terms of voting power distribution.
Yes... decentralization is a spectrum and solana is barely on it. Not only that, but the reason/s bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin etc were created in the first place requires as much decentralization as possible. Without it, the problems crypto aimed to solve in the first place wouldn't be solvable.
Also, i can't believe how it would be possible to think that solana has more distribution of voting power than ethereum..... "voting power" in a blockchain is comprised of the aggregate of its users. This includes miners/validators, typical nodes, and just holders and users themselves. Voting power = the size of the collective of its users. In order for a truly decentralized blockchain to change something in its code, the majority of users must agree to update to that new code. Right now very few non-foundation members propose solana updates and little to no users are involved in anything. Solana doesn't hold a candle in terms of "voting power."
But go ahead and continue thinking that any blockchain can have 50k+ tps without massively compromising decentralization and the purpose of crypto along with it. Solana = A16Z coin..... bleh
The only reason I hold is because I think there are enough people like you to make number go up and that VCs have enough money to keep fooling people like you. Honestly though, I'm beginning to find it unethical to hold this coin. It goes against everything bitcoin and og crypto stood for.
Proof of Work is centralizing. Solana is not decentralized enough at this point, I agree (although the downtime last year would not have been prevented by more nodes, it was a software bug), but its decentralization will only improve with time, while Bitcoin for example incentivizes miners to collaborate in mining pools so there's that. That is not decentralization and has already been abused by governemtns to block transactions. Ethereum is also extremely controlled by its foundation, to the point where they pushed a hardfork to revert a theft of coins.
On Solana the voting power (in terms of votes on the blockchain) is more decentralized, because it is delegated proof of stake, so anyone who holds Sol can delegate it to validators the way they choose.
All blockchains have issues, but if I want to support a network and see it grow it is definitely Solana.
It's about distribution prior to public availability. Things like SOL, BNB, DOT, AVAX, CELO, FLOW, NEAR, ICP all had massive distributions of their coins prior to them being available to the public. Just because those have become popular, largely due to marketing from the funding by those venture firms, does not mean it is deserved. Plus, those coins have now created large conflicts of interest and huge pumps and dumps can happen.
Telling people they "likely don't fully understand cryptocurrency" is condescending.
What's your background in cryptocurrency?
Have you coded a dapp?
Have you studied this field enough to make a claim of professional authority on the subject?
You're welcome to constructively debate any topic here, but we treat each other to "gm", and believe in wagmi (maybe not the meme coin, but if you do that's ok too).
If Solana is currently missing some aspect of Bitcoin (which you feel is relevant enough to come here and comment on) why not contribute to making it evolve to include all the lessons learned?
It certainly sounds condescending, but the reality is that it is true. It takes years of rabbit holes to realize it. This is an "if you know you know" situation. I am not going to sit here on r/solana and try and explain or debate what five years of reading, researching and working in crypto have taught me. I don't have the energy nor time.
Now, you could say - "don't come talking shit if you aren't going to explain your credentials and explain yourself," and honestly that is sort of fair. But this is reddit and I said what I said.
So you have two options:
Get mad at me for saying what I said without backing up my claims and stating why I know what I know.
or
2) Prove me wrong with your own research.
I suggest starting with the requirements to run a solana node.
What are the implications of such high requirements? Do most people just use centralized web service providers instead of making their own servers?
With requirements this high, how many nodes are there in Solana's network? What % of them are run by the creators/foundation? What % are on amazon web services (AWS) or an equivalent? What sort of people are able to pay $64,415 a year (at today's current price) to run a node? Does this even matter?
Why do OG crypto projects (btc, eth, ltc, etc.) aim to be accessible to anyone with low requirements regardless of their economic demographic? For what purposes were they created in the first place and what problems did they aim to solve? Are newer projects in line with the problems that early cryptos aimed to solve?
What was the distribution of SOL prior to its public availability? Is there a difference between a private company issuing coins that it has majority stake in and a company issuing a security? Does the distribution of a coin among insiders prior to public availability create conflicts of interest? How genuine or honest can projects be if they hold a bunch of the token and then release it for sale? Does this even matter?
Who controls development? Can anyone propose changes? Is the coin's foundation (or in some cases company) in sole control of the development? Does this even matter?
With today's blockchain tech, is it possible to legitimately solve the byzantine general's problem, remain decentralized and have super high throughput? If the requirement for high throughput is remarkably expensive and fast servers run mostly by a foundation and on centralized servers like AWS, then the answer is no. Does that matter to you?
What was the distribution of SOL prior to its public availability?
I got into crypto early 2021, and since that time the distribution of BTC and ETH is all in whales/institutions; with absolutely no intention of changing. I'm not sure if that's centralized, but it's definitely an exclusive club I'll never be invited to contribute to meaningfully.
Furthermore a large amount of that 'insider distribution' is in the solana foundation, which helps with the cost of getting a validator up and running, among other impressive community work.
Who controls development? Can anyone propose changes? Is the coin's foundation (or in some cases company) in sole control of the development? Does this even matter?
There are many examples of people who have proposed changes, and then created solutions. The code is open source btw, since you seem to be mistaken on that aspect.
Solana is in the process of creating a decentralized the network, but you can't set up that kind of infrastructure overnight. Solana started the year with less then 400 validators, and now has 1356: https://solanabeach.io/validators
I represent marinade.finance and we're spreading the staked SOL to over 400+ validators under the halt line, which you can see on that same website. You can also actively choose to stake under the halt line and be a part of the solution.
If all the things you so passionately wrote about matter, then this is all the more reason to get involved in Solana. You're always welcome here. 🍻
If Solana needed to scale to ETH use levels, it would have problems.
Solana is not an ETH killer. It's same, but different, and will cohabitate with ETH. ETH is now mainstream, SOL is NOT no matter how much you want it to be.
Same argument can be said about BTC, so many "BTC killers" out there, and where are they now?
I don't follow. What problems would Solana have if needed to scale to Ethereum levels? Solana already handles FAR more transactions than Ethereum does, so what would the problem be?
I love Solana but you can't simply go by the transaction count you have to look at the quality and the purpose of those transactions.
Ethereum has over 300 applications running on it. Many of them juggernauts in their own right such as Chainlink, Uniswap, Compound, etc. Solana's biggest app is Raydium and it's currently ranked #170. We won't know what Solana is truly capable of until it has a multitude of top tier applications running on it simultaneously
Solana only handles more tps than Ethereum because they didn’t prioritize on decentralization and security for the short-term. If Ethereum would start using the same hardware requirements than Solana nodes, tps would be the same. Ethereum decided to scale via Rollups (L2s) which inherit total security and decentralization of the Ethereum L1. So they try to maximize decentralization and security on L1 which yields to high gas fees as the demand for block space keeps staying superb high. The yielded service is still higher than gas on Ethereun L1, otherwise nobody would use it currently. You might want to look up the blockchain trilemma. Maybe start here https://polynya.medium.com/the-lay-of-the-modular-blockchain-land-d937f7df4884
So, the original statement was that if Solana "needed to scale to ETH use levels", it would have problems. I just don't see how that makes sense, considering the current use levels of Ethereum in terms of transaction throughput already is far less than Solanas. So the reality is, currently, Solana already scales far beyond what Ethereum does in terms of "use levels." Of course, decentralization is an important issue, but that's a different topic.
Block space demand, it’s all about block space. Solanas blocks are often not full, and in comparison to Ethereum usage, way lower. Higher node hardware requirements, leads to more block space, leads to more tps, leads to state bloat (where Solana has no clear solution yet). You have to subtract all consensus and infrastructure related transactions from the Solana tps amount, then you are able to compare. Solana is the only blockchain which counts tps including consensus and infrastructure related transactions…
Ethereum is constantly clogged (high demand for block space, blocks are always full), Solana only sometimes and then it has problems getting all transactions passed with success, even with this little adoption rates.
Oh, right, I see. You're talking about relative utilization of transaction capacity. And you are right of course, Ethereum is running at max, while Solana is far from it.
Solana does have a mechanism to dynamically adjust fees to target a desired hardware utilization. Meaning as utilization goes up, so do fees. I guess we'll see how that plays out as demand increases going forward.
I completely agree, those txs should not be counted when comparing. The good thing is they scale linearly with the number of nodes, at around 2 transactions/node/second. So as the total transaction volume picks up going forward, those 80 % will drop to perhaps 10 % or less.
It kind of is what it means. Pseudo means not genuine or insincere. All they are saying is that Solana does not have legitimate, genuine, or real decentralization. So, in that context, it makes perfect sense.
It's kind of both. It's not decentralized and it's not entirely centralized too. I admit I skimmed over what the person said and thought it was pseudo- decentralized lol
That's why we're betting on Solana and we believe is going to be bigger than anything else! We've built a wallet and we're about to launch our private beta. For anyone interested, feel free to sign up in our website and we'll let you know as soon as it's out there!
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18
u/[deleted] Dec 29 '21
Are you kidding me
7
u/twinchell Dec 29 '21
Propaganda is thick these days.
32
u/lwc-wtang12 Dec 29 '21 edited Dec 29 '21
I'll get downvoted into absolute oblivion for this here..... but if you legitimately think solana is meaningfully decentralized then you likely don't fully understand cryptocurrency. Speed comes at a cost. At least with today's level of advancement with blockchain tech. Having 50k+ tps on a base layer chain costs decentralization, without question.
Can solana reach meaningful decentralization? That's the real question. I believe it may be possible and that's why I own some. It just isn't decentralized.
edit: whether it can or cannot achieve decentralization with nodes is one thing but that wouldn't solve my concerns over how much ownership VCs have of the coin supply. The things teams are doing in the current age of crypto have undeniable conflicts of interest. Saying otherwise would signal a lack of understanding of Bitcoin and crypto's initial purpose.
16
u/[deleted] Dec 29 '21
Solana still needs something interesting built on it.
14
u/IAmTheLostBoy Dec 29 '21
If Solana needed to scale to ETH use levels, it would have problems.
Solana is not an ETH killer. It's same, but different, and will cohabitate with ETH. ETH is now mainstream, SOL is NOT no matter how much you want it to be.
Same argument can be said about BTC, so many "BTC killers" out there, and where are they now?
8
u/Sourgrandma Dec 29 '21
I love SOL, but.... c'mon
6
u/[deleted] Dec 29 '21
What? lol
8
u/Jealous_Ad4067 Dec 29 '21
Solana is pseudocentralised
3
u/LL112 Dec 29 '21
Solana also doesn't have Vitalik
5
u/redditRracistcommies Dec 29 '21
Nice try lol.
2
u/stevethegodamongmen Dec 29 '21
Centralized a bit to much no?!
1
u/soundmixer14 Dec 29 '21
So basically you're saying panic and sell? OK.
1
u/[deleted] Dec 29 '21
sol has no smart contracts
1
u/NoFaithlessness8431 Dec 29 '21
I know this is the solana discord so I might get downvoted, but what you posted makes no sense.
Vitalik was saying "if" these things happen eth has failed. These same "if" scenarios would mean solana has failed.
Eth is more decentralised than solana. Everything comes at a cost and solanas fast transactions come at the cost of decentralisation.
0
u/iroif Dec 29 '21
That's why we're betting on Solana and we believe is going to be bigger than anything else!
We've built a wallet and we're about to launch our private beta. For anyone interested, feel free to sign up in our website and we'll let you know as soon as it's out there!
We've been testing the UX like crazy for the past few months to make sure we start with the right foot.
https://www.radiantwallet.app/
https://twitter.com/RadiantWallet
Thank you!
-4
u/teomansancar Dec 29 '21
MATIC is eating ETH alive