Ethereum’s Justin Drake Sees No Threat From Solana, Says Its ‘Golden Era’ Will End

Ethereum’s
Beam
Chain
“is
all
about
improving
the
long-term
health
and
security
of
the
consensus
layer,”
says
Drake.
“Solana
has
no
consideration
for
health.”

Updated
Dec
4,
2024,
10:39 p.m.
UTCPublished
Dec
4,
2024,
9:46 p.m.
UTC

Ethereum
developer
Justin
Drake
said
his
comprehensive
proposal
to
overhaul
the
second-largest
blockchain’s
consensus
layer
isn’t
about
catching
up
with
a
rival,
it’s
about
sticking
around
for
the
long
haul.

Drake

unveiled
the
proposal,
known
as
the
Beam
Chain,
at
Ethereum’s
biennial
Devcon
gathering
in
Bangkok
last
month,
at
a
time
when
the
network’s
native
token
ETH
is

lagging
behind
its
counterparts
at
other
major
layer-1
blockchains.

The
Ethereum
network
enjoyed
wide
adoption
over
the
last
few
years,
making
it
more
expensive
and
slower
to
use.
In
response,
a
cohort
of
layer-1s,
known
as
“Ethereum
killers,”
emerged
in
2020
to
compete
with
Ethereum
on
transaction
speeds,
and
Solana
has
been
seen
as
the
leader
of
the
pack.

Recently,

activity
on
Solana
has
exploded,
mainly
thanks
to
the
surge
of
memecoins
on
the
blockchain,
with
users
wondering
whether
it
will
overtake
Ethereum
as
the
“hot”
chain.

But
Drake
said
he
doesn’t
see
Solana
as
a
threat
to
Ethereum.
Neither
does
he
see
the
Beam
Chain
as
a
way
to
restore
Ethereum’s
edge
in
the
short
term.

The
Beam
Chain
“is
all
about
improving
the
long-term
health
and
security
of
the
consensus
layer,
it
has
nothing
to
do
with
performance,”
Drake
said
in
an
interview
with
CoinDesk.

“Solana
has
no
consideration
for
health.
The
only
thing
they
care
about
is
performance.
They
care
about
reducing
latency
and
increasing
throughput,”
Drake
added.

Ethereum
has
tried
to
address
the
scalability
challenge,
by
pushing

forward
a
rollup-centric
roadmap,
meaning
users
can
transact
faster
and
more
cheaply
on
a
bunch
of
auxiliary
networks,
known
as
layer-2s
or
rollups.
Popular
layer-2s
on
top
of
Ethereum
include
Arbitrum,
Optimism,
Base,
and
ZKsync.

Ethereum
developers
have
heavily
relied
on
the
layer-2s
to
offer
faster
and
lower
transaction
fees.

“I
think
the
layer-1
is
competing
with
Bitcoin,
and
the
layer-2s
are
competing
with
Solana.
And
so
it’s
not
even
part
of
the
remit
of
the
layer-1
to
even
compete
with
Solana,”
Drake
said.
“We
should
be
competing
on
security
and
health.
And
so
if
there’s
any
competition
to
Solana,
it
needs
to
come
from
the
applications
and
from
the
layer-2s.”

Arbitrum
for
example,
has
a
slot
time,
or
time
between
blocks
of
transactions
being
published
to
the
chain,
of
250
milliseconds.
“That
is
faster
than
Solana,”
Drake
said.
(According
to
a
recent

research
report
from
Galaxy
Digital,
“Solana
targets
slot
times
of
400
milliseconds,
though
they
typically
range
from
500-600ms
in
practice.”)

Drake
did
add,
though,
that
there
are
some
features
for
Ethereum’s
layer-1
that
developers
have
worked
on
that
will
make
Ethereum
more
competitive
on
speed
with
Solana.

The
main
ones
are
“pre-confirmations,”
which

speed
up
the
confirmation
of
transactions
and
are
supposed
to
make
the
user
experience
on
Ethereum
as
smooth
as
Solana’s,
as
well
as
“blobs,”
a
feature

that
allows
Ethereum
to
process
large
batches
of
transaction
data
off-chain.
But
these
are
all
separate
from
the
Beam
Chain,
which
Drake
has
said
he
is
hoping
to
implement
by
2029.

And
while
Solana
is
seeing
a
lot
of
momentum,
Drake
said
he
is
tuning
out
the
noise
to
focus
on
long-term
gains
for
Ethereum.

“Solana
is
having
its
moment
right
now,
but
I
think
it’s
going
to
be
the
end
of
the
Solana
golden
era,
because
all
of
the
competitive
advantages
that
Solana
has
around
latency
and
throughput
are
going
to
melt
away
because
of
fundamental
differences
in
architecture
that
don’t
make
it
scalable,”
Drake
said.

A
Solana
spokesperson
did
not
respond
to
a
request
for
comment
by
press
time.

Ultimately
Drake
said,
his
North
Star
is
to
create
an
“internet
of
value,”
and
the
Beam
Chain
is
what
he
thinks
is
needed
to
achieve
that.

“We
need
a
super-secure,
incredibly
neutral
layer-1
and
then
we
need
a
very
rich
and
vibrant
ecosystem
of
layer-2s
that
bring
the
application
to
the
users,”
he
said.

Read
more:

Top
Ethereum
Researcher’s
Dramatic
Proposal
Draws
Standing-Room-Only
Crowd