The Solana Ecosystem
We started the year with a note on belonging. I felt inspired to write about this because of our work on two protocols, one of which today’s issue covers extensively. In mid-to-late 2022, Solana was the industry’s darling due to its figureheads. SBF’s overarching influence on its ecosystem could not be understated. But in the following months, as FTX collapsed, so did the Solana ecosystem.
Integrated vs Modular: Solana vs Ethereum
In the rapidly evolving landscape of blockchain technology, two distinct approaches have emerged in the design and implementation of these distributed ledgers: integrated and modular blockchains. Since the origins of public, decentralised and permissionless blockchains, architectures were often built in an integrated way: Bitcoin came first then XRP, Ethereum and many others followed suit for over a decade. The scaling trilemma arose in debates that a blockchain can only have two out of three properties: security, decentralisation and speed. As such, Ethereum’s roadmap has evolved to encompass Layer 2s, a modular way to scale Ethereum. Understanding the differences between these approaches, exemplified by Solana (integrated) and Ethereum’s Layer 2 ecosystem (modular), provides insight into their respective architectures, roadmaps, and the impact on adoption and development.
