If you have been in the Blockchain space for enough time, you must have seen comparison articles of various L1 Blockchains.

Sometimes these are good sources of alpha, while many times these are crafted shilling pitches. So why another comparison? And specifically Solana vs NEAR?

Let’s answer all these questions with the help of this article.

Solana was the first L1 blockchain where I started my BUIDLing journey. Broadly, there were two main reasons:

1. My Web3 mentor suggested to me, and

2. It had numerous benefits like speed and low gas

I built a cool NFT-minting dApp on Solana that lets anybody convert an image into an NFT and stored it on the network. Interestingly, I applied for Solana India Fellowship in Jan 2022 and got shortlisted in the first round. Everything was going well.

So why did I make the switch to NEAR?

There exist some key principles which make any project a true blockchain network 💯 This was termed a Blockchain Trilemma by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. It says that every network should have:

1. Decentralization,

2. Security, and

3. Scalability

But the inherently complex architecture of Blockchains makes it hard to implement all three features simultaneously.

Bitcoin is by far the most decentralized and secure network from all perspectives. But scalability is its biggest bottleneck. We miss you, Satoshi Nakamoto!!

Ethereum on the other hand is a very popular L1 blockchain. But it lacks scalability and people have been waiting for a long time for Ethereum 2.0

Its current Transactions per Second (TPS) is quite low compared to existing Web2 solutions. For instance, Ethereum’s 30 TPS is no match for financial behemoth Visa, which processes over 100k TPS 😅

Simply put, building a network that can onboard Billion+ of users to Web3 is a tough task. And Scalability is its Achilles’ Heel 🔱

Solana was launched to bring the dream of ultra-high TPS into Reality. And you know what;

They Actually Did. At the cost of Security 🤌🏽 But how?

An important fact 🔔

48% of $SOL Tokens are allocated to Venture Capitalists, and the Company itself.

Such insane private ownership certainly raises legitimate questions on the oligarch nature of Solana.

Security is the most important aspect of the Blockchain Trilemma. It’s more like an overall pyramid structure where Security is the bottom-most layer having the highest significance. Decentralization takes time (by increasing nodes) while Scalability is a lifelong process 🤌🏽

For every Proof-of-Stake chain, tokens are the rewards that also maintain its security. Everybody wants to win staking and delegation rewards 🤤 But what if some malicious transaction passes through and corrupts the network?

To counter this, Slashing is implemented. Whenever malicious transactions are committed, some portion of staked tokens by the validator is slashed (reduced) as a punishment.

What’s important to know is that Solana hasn’t yet implemented Slashing into their network. No automated slashing for sure till now. Multiple exploits and outages due to network congestion have happened on Solana in the past.

Nobody can forget the $320mn Wormhole Bridge heist. This attack exploited some unpatched Rust contracts in Solana. Although the issue was fixed, it was a big 🚩for me to leave Solana 👋🏼

Also, Scalability will soon become a bottleneck for Solana in the future. Since it uses Vertical Scaling, it would demand more powerful Validator Nodes. This proposes serious technical limitations which can’t be easily overcome. Sharding is the most viable solution to scale blockchain networks for now.

NEAR is a truly decentralized network that has successfully implemented all three features of the Blockchain Trilemma.

Starting from Security, NEAR has implemented Automatic Slashing by default. Validators are fearful of losing their stakes upon committing bad transactions.

For scalability, NEAR has implemented the most advanced Sharding design on Earth i.e., Nightshade.

Also, it has the fastest block finality time thanks to Doomslug.

Cross-chain communication has been at the core of NEAR from the beginning. In Nightshade, each shard acts like a separate chain that can cross-communicate with other chains asynchronously, thanks to State sharding 🤌🏽

NEAR Protocol has been building the future of Web3 for a very long time. And now, all of it has started to take shape.

• Nodes will increase over time leading to more decentralization.

• Security is already guaranteed pretty much with no exploits reported to date.

• Nightshade makes sure that NEAR scales to Billions of users positively 🤙🏽

I even proudly tell everybody that NEAR Protocol is a certified Carbon-neutral and environment-friendly blockchain network. And it’s our duty to support projects that advance our technology without causing detrimental effects on the nature 🤞🏽🍀

Disclaimer:

Whatever you read above are facts 💯 I am not an official member of NEAR Protocol neither I do promotions. I am also not a shilling agent who sells you shitcoins 😮‍💨

I am not asking you to invest in NEAR. But am surely asking you to come and build the Future with NEAR #TheFutureisNear 🤙🏽🚀

If you liked reading this article, you can do me a favor by sharing this with your network. Once again, thank you so much for paying attention.

Will be back with another article on Doomslug soon. Till then, Sayonara 👋🏼

If you have been in the Blockchain space for enough time, you must have seen comparison articles of various L1 Blockchains.

Sometimes these are good sources of alpha, while many times these are crafted shilling pitches. So why another comparison? And specifically Solana vs NEAR?

Let’s answer all these questions with the help of this article.

Solana was the first L1 blockchain where I started my BUIDLing journey. Broadly, there were two main reasons:

1. My Web3 mentor suggested to me, and

2. It had numerous benefits like speed and low gas

I built a cool NFT-minting dApp on Solana that lets anybody convert an image into an NFT and stored it on the network. Interestingly, I applied for Solana India Fellowship in Jan 2022 and got shortlisted in the first round. Everything was going well.

So why did I make the switch to NEAR?

There exist some key principles which make any project a true blockchain network 💯 This was termed a Blockchain Trilemma by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. It says that every network should have:

1. Decentralization,

2. Security, and

3. Scalability

But the inherently complex architecture of Blockchains makes it hard to implement all three features simultaneously.

Bitcoin is by far the most decentralized and secure network from all perspectives. But scalability is its biggest bottleneck. We miss you, Satoshi Nakamoto!!

Ethereum on the other hand is a very popular L1 blockchain. But it lacks scalability and people have been waiting for a long time for Ethereum 2.0

Its current Transactions per Second (TPS) is quite low compared to existing Web2 solutions. For instance, Ethereum’s 30 TPS is no match for financial behemoth Visa, which processes over 100k TPS 😅

Simply put, building a network that can onboard Billion+ of users to Web3 is a tough task. And Scalability is its Achilles’ Heel 🔱

Solana was launched to bring the dream of ultra-high TPS into Reality. And you know what;

They Actually Did. At the cost of Security 🤌🏽 But how?

An important fact 🔔

48% of $SOL Tokens are allocated to Venture Capitalists, and the Company itself.

Such insane private ownership certainly raises legitimate questions on the oligarch nature of Solana.

Security is the most important aspect of the Blockchain Trilemma. It’s more like an overall pyramid structure where Security is the bottom-most layer having the highest significance. Decentralization takes time (by increasing nodes) while Scalability is a lifelong process 🤌🏽

For every Proof-of-Stake chain, tokens are the rewards that also maintain its security. Everybody wants to win staking and delegation rewards 🤤 But what if some malicious transaction passes through and corrupts the network?

To counter this, Slashing is implemented. Whenever malicious transactions are committed, some portion of staked tokens by the validator is slashed (reduced) as a punishment.

What’s important to know is that Solana hasn’t yet implemented Slashing into their network. No automated slashing for sure till now. Multiple exploits and outages due to network congestion have happened on Solana in the past.

Nobody can forget the $320mn Wormhole Bridge heist. This attack exploited some unpatched Rust contracts in Solana. Although the issue was fixed, it was a big 🚩for me to leave Solana 👋🏼

Also, Scalability will soon become a bottleneck for Solana in the future. Since it uses Vertical Scaling, it would demand more powerful Validator Nodes. This proposes serious technical limitations which can’t be easily overcome. Sharding is the most viable solution to scale blockchain networks for now.

NEAR is a truly decentralized network that has successfully implemented all three features of the Blockchain Trilemma.

Starting from Security, NEAR has implemented Automatic Slashing by default. Validators are fearful of losing their stakes upon committing bad transactions.

For scalability, NEAR has implemented the most advanced Sharding design on Earth i.e., Nightshade.

Also, it has the fastest block finality time thanks to Doomslug.

Cross-chain communication has been at the core of NEAR from the beginning. In Nightshade, each shard acts like a separate chain that can cross-communicate with other chains asynchronously, thanks to State sharding 🤌🏽

NEAR Protocol has been building the future of Web3 for a very long time. And now, all of it has started to take shape.

• Nodes will increase over time leading to more decentralization.

• Security is already guaranteed pretty much with no exploits reported to date.

• Nightshade makes sure that NEAR scales to Billions of users positively 🤙🏽

I even proudly tell everybody that NEAR Protocol is a certified Carbon-neutral and environment-friendly blockchain network. And it’s our duty to support projects that advance our technology without causing detrimental effects on the nature 🤞🏽🍀

Disclaimer:

Whatever you read above are facts 💯 I am not an official member of NEAR Protocol neither I do promotions. I am also not a shilling agent who sells you shitcoins 😮‍💨

I am not asking you to invest in NEAR. But am surely asking you to come and build the Future with NEAR #TheFutureisNear 🤙🏽🚀

If you liked reading this article, you can do me a favor by sharing this with your network. Once again, thank you so much for paying attention.

Will be back with another article on Doomslug soon. Till then, Sayonara 👋🏼