As blockchains scale, the cost of transactions and blockspace falls. The 2022-2023 bear market has been characterized by a continuous build out of infrastructure, to lay the groundwork for future growth. 



Yet arguments about the best way to scale abound, they often fall into one of two camps.



One is “modular,” with its standard-bearers Ethereum and Cosmos. The other is “monolithic” which has come to be dominated in the crypto zeitgeist by Solana — although they prefer the term “integrated.”



An essay published Friday by pseudonymous Ethereum advocate Polynya critiquing monolithic blockchains, while not mentioning it by name, has been interpreted by many as a veiled critique of Solana.



The critique comes against a backdrop of swelling interest in the network spurred by a significant price surge in Solana’s native crypto asset ( SOL ), which is up 140% in the past month with a market cap approaching $25 billion​​​​.



While often praised for its high transaction speed and low fees, Solana has faced criticism in the past for network instability, including outright outages , and high hardware requirements to operate validating nodes​​.



Responding to perceived shortcomings, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, has acknowledged some network flaws , but contends the Solana community has worked diligently to mitigate them.



Yakovenko views these challenges as part of the network’s growth, likening them to historical issues faced by other major networks like Ethereum and Bitcoin.



Plans include the mid-2024 launch of Firedancer, the first independent validator client software for Solana (Ethereum has 5), which is expected to increase throughput to as much as a million transactions per second (TPS) in the future.



Yakovenko, responding to Polynya’s specific critique, argued the natural growth in computing power coupled with falling costs as hardware becomes commoditized will handle Solana’s needs with aplomb.




You can literally ask google these days to do all the math for you. (1gbps * 1 year * $0.64/terabyte * 100,000 boxes)/(1000 user txs per second * seconds per year) = $0.008 That is less than 1 biden cent per user transation to cover the cost of a 1gbps sustained load on 100k… https://t.co/ffnGFa7Ucz — toly