Anatoly Yakovenko, CEO of Solana Labs, said he wants Solana to be a continually evolving network that’s continually updated to satisfy the changing needs of users, which contrasts with Vitalik Buterin's vision of Ethereum as a self-sustaining blockchain.
“Solana mustn’t ever stop iterating. It mustn’t rely on a single group or individual, but when it ever stops adapting to the needs of its developers and users, it can die,” Yakovenko explained in a post to X on Saturday.
His comments were in response to a post by Buterin, who said Ethereum needs to succeed in some extent where it passes the “walkaway test,” meaning it becomes self-sustaining for many years to return without developer influence.
Source: Anatoly Yakovenko
Ethereum and Solana are two of the leading blockchains in a sea of Layer 1 competitors.
Ethereum is by far probably the most decentralized Layer 1 smart contract blockchain and dominates stablecoin and real-world asset tokenization activity, while Solana is considered one of the faster networks that’s arguably more popular with consumer apps and brings in higher fees.
However, their planned paths to success couldn't be more different.
Buterin wants to maximise decentralization, privacy, and self-sovereignty on Ethereum – even on the expense of mainstream adoption – while Yakovenko wants Solana to be an evolving ecosystem that introduces latest features to adapt to real-world needs.
Proponents of Buterin's approach argue that adding too many features increases the chance of errors, security vulnerabilities, and unintended protocol consequences while increasing the attack surface for centralization.
However, those that share Yakovenko's “adapt or die” mentality imagine that a “hands-off” approach results in slower innovation and potentially the corporate being overtaken by faster-moving competitors.
AI could update Solana in the longer term: Yakovenko
However, Yakovenko said that protocol updates should come from a various community of contributors, relatively than a couple of development teams.
He even hinted at a future where Solana's network fees could fund AI-powered development to write down and improve Solana's codebase.
“You should all the time expect that there will likely be a next version of Solana,” Yakovenko said.
Ethereum just isn’t yet self-sustaining
Meanwhile, Buterin said there remains to be numerous work to be done before Ethereum can adopt the hands-off approach.
Quantum resistance features, a more scalable architecture and a greater block formation model that may withstand centralization pressure were amongst the important thing improvements. According to Buterin, Ethereum must stand the test of time.
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