Solana vs Ethereum, Chapter 1: An In-Depth Blockchain Comparison

Do you know what the fundamental differences are between Solana and Ethereum? If you have a basic understanding of blockchain terminology and want to learn more, let's take a look at these projects, their history, and more. Additionally, we will explore infrastructure differences, including types of consensus models, token standards, and smart contract design.

So, let's start with the fact that according to the CMC rating, these two crypto projects are the leading ones. When comparing two blockchains in the top 10, there are many different things to consider. First, before diving into the technical aspects, it is worth considering the history and biography of the development team of each project. This indicates the strength of the project's foundation.

A Brief History of Ethereum:

Vitalik Buterin originally proposed Ethereum in 2013, as a then 19-year-old coding whiz and Bitcoin fanatic. Envisioning a new decentralization paradigm, Buterin introduced the power of smart contracts, transforming blockchain from a purely transactional A-to-B payment service into an open-source decentralized application (dapps) development landscape. Joining Buterin in this revolution are computer science experts Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio and Joseph Lubin as additional co-founders.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF), part of a much larger community, is responsible for the development and governance of the Ethereum network. However, it is not a centralized organization that controls or manages the network. The non-profit organization promotes a number of initiatives that enable the global community of developers, artists, leaders, entrepreneurs and ETH HODLers to contribute to the development and improvement of the ecosystem. This includes events such as the annual Ethereum Devcon. In addition, EF offers a fellowship program and an ecosystem support program to provide financial and technical support for the development of projects based on or using Ethereum technologies.

A Brief History of Solana:

In 2017, Anatoly Yakovenko, a computer science engineer and distributed systems expert, published a whitepaper introducing the concept of “proof of history” (PoH). With experience at Qualcomm, D2iQ (formerly Mesosphere), and Dropbox, Yakovenko knew that creating clock consensus for decentralized networks would solve the blockchain trilemma of increasing scalability without sacrificing decentralization and security.

A few months later, former Qualcomm colleague Greg Fitzgerald brought Yakovenko's whitepaper to life, publishing a project on GitHub called "Silk." Moreover, Fitzgerald's implementation was successful, verifying 10,000 transactions in just over 0.5 seconds. Soon after, another Qualcomm comrade, Stephen Akridge, proposed increasing throughput by offloading signature verification to GPUs.
Taking suggestions from Fitzgerald and Akridge, Yakovenko hired the pair, and together they founded what became known as the Solana Foundation in March 2018. The project was originally called "Loom". However, around the same time, an Ethereum layer-2 project called "Loom Network" was launched, causing confusion in the crypto community. So the project was rebranded as "Solana" as a nod to Yakovenko, Fitzgerald and Akridge's favorite beach surfing when they worked together at Qualcomm.

Dear readers, thanks for your attention and time, I hope you enjoyed it. As the title says, this is the first chapter of a long story comparing these two great blockchains. I will publish the second part soon, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss out, sincerely yours - CryptoLog.