Not only do Ethereum and Solana separate problems with scalability, also they are increasingly divided by competing ideas about what blockchain networks can have to endure in the longer term.
Recent comments from each network's co-founders revealed two competing definitions of “resilience,” based on different assumptions about risk, infrastructure, and the longer term shape of blockchain adoption.
In an
Buterin argued that Ethereum isn’t designed to optimize efficiency or convenience, but relatively to make sure that users remain confident even in hostile conditions.
“Resilience is the sport through which anyone, anywhere on this planet, can access the network and be a first-class participant,” Buterin wrote, adding, “Resilience is sovereignty.”
Source: Vitalik Buterin
Solana co-founder signals a special approach
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko responded to Buterin's X post, calling it a “cool vision” and providing a contrasting definition of resilience.
For Yakovenko, resilience comes from the power to synchronize massive amounts of knowledge globally with high throughput and low latency, without counting on trusted intermediaries. For him, reliability is inextricably linked to performance and never a philosophical compromise against it.
“If the world can profit from 1 Gbit/s and 10 simultaneous 10 ms batch auctions, then that’s the minimum value we’d like to reliably deliver worldwide.”
“If it’s 10Gbps and 100 1ms auctions, then that’s what we’ll deliver,” he added.
Source: Anatoly Yakovenko
The exchange follows Buterin's claims on Sunday that Ethereum has effectively solved the blockchain trilemma of decentralization, security and scalability through PeerDAS and zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zkEVMs), Cointelegraph reported.
This claim increased scrutiny of Ethereum's roadmap and raised the query of whether resilience must be measured in redundancy and sovereignty or in speed and economic competitiveness.
“ETH’s chosen path is a losing one: objectively it’s unable to compete on capability inside competitive timelines, neither is it in a position to compete on speed in any respect,” Cyber Capital founder Justin Bons wrote in response, arguing that performance and economic realities can’t be treated as secondary concerns.
Resilience as redundancy vs. resilience as performance
Ethereum’s resilience thesis relies on architectural caution and redundancy. The network operates independent execution and consensus clients and promotes diversity to scale back risks that might stall production.
This also extends to Ethereum’s scaling approach. On Wednesday, developers raised Ethereum's blob limit for the second time, progressively increasing data throughput while prioritizing fee stability and node security. Instead of aggressively pushing execution speed, the network opted for incremental capability increases to attenuate systemic risks.
Economic signals also support the network’s resilience approach. Ethereum’s validator exit queue dropped to close zero in early January, indicating a renewed willingness amongst validators to lock up capital for the long run. This was seen as an indication of confidence in Ethereum's long-term security and roadmap.
Solana's approach prioritizes resilience through performance. Yakovenko's comments suggest that blockchain will give attention to reliably settling markets, auctions and payments in real time.
Solana's story reflects this angle. While the network has suffered significant outages in previous cycles, it has continually strengthened its infrastructure through protocol upgrades, fee markets, and network improvements.
Infrastructure trade-offs and institutional signals
Both models have their very own compromises. Ethereum's ambitious resilience claims rely on future implementations of zkEVMs and applicant-developer separation, which has not yet been tested on the mainnet level.
Bons argued that these designs could create recent centralization pressures by shifting power to specialized, capital-intensive developers, potentially putting lives in danger if that layer were to fail.
Institutional behavior offers one other perspective on resilience. Ethereum stays the dominant settlement layer for stablecoins and tokenized treasuries, reflecting a preference for predictability and conservative risk profiles.
On the opposite hand, Solana has accelerated institutional adoption in performance-critical use cases. Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) on Solana reached record levels in late 2025, while spot Solana ETFs and enterprise payments experiments gained traction.
Taken together, the divergence suggests that Ethereum and Solana are taking different approaches to resilience. Ethereum prioritizes survivability, even on the expense of speed.
On the opposite hand, Solana prioritizes economics under real-time demand, even when this requires closer coordination.
