What parameters of Solana SOL give it an edge over Ethereum ETH?
Solana Network has beaten Ethereum ETH, according to its latest Validator health report. Leaving it as one of the most secure and decentralized Proof-of-Stake networks.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Solana has taken the lead in becoming the most secure and decentralized PoS network
- The Solana network is taking measures to improve its network by eliminating technical issues.
- Ethereum’s concentrated node distribution makes it more vulnerable to attacks.
The Validator Health Report published by the Solana foundation provided information on the number of validator nodes in the network and their distribution.
Nodes are basically computers connected to the network to maintain and validate the blockchain. Where Validating nodes, also known as Consensus Nodes are specifically involved in validating transactions and adding them to the blockchain.
The Report has indicated that there are more than 3,400 nodes in the Solana network. Out of those over 2,400 are validator nodes that participate in validating transactions on the chain. This makes Solana a more secure and decentralized space, thus more resistant to attacks as well.
What does the Nakamoto Coefficient say?
The Solana network came ahead of Ethereum in its Nakamoto Coefficient. While the Nakamoto Coefficient of Ethereum was 1 the value of Solana was 31; the highest of the rest. Moreover, a higher value of the Nakamoto Coefficient indicates that a network is more decentralized and more secure.
But what is Nakamoto Coefficient? Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase founded this metric. It is a measure of how decentralized a blockchain is and the minimum number of nodes required to disrupt a network.
Thus the Validator report shows that the Solana network is comparatively more decentralized than Ethereum; the largest Proof-of-stake network. Moreover, it would require compromising a great number of nodes before the network disrupts making Solana more secure.
Reason for the difference
Solana and Ethereum technically differ in the distribution of their validators. This can be evaluated by the staked ETH – a measure of how much crypto is supporting the network – which is 44% held by only four participants. This suggests that the validator distribution of the Ethereum network is less decentralized than Soalana.
The distribution of nodes across different geographies is another factor that can affect a network’s decentralization. As per the report, the Solana network active stake is evenly distributed across the countries. No country holds more than 33% of the stakes. While in the case of Ethereum, 45% of the stakes are only concentrated in the U.S. This concentrated distribution of nodes makes Ethereum more vulnerable to attacks. While Solana is also more geographically diverse than Ethereum.
Safety measures are taken by Solana
Without a backup plan, a bug in the validator client software could potentially shut down a blockchain network. This is why for emergency situations, Solana has 2 validator clients available, with a third client under development.
Solana has already faced major outages in the past. While one of them was quite recently on 25th February which lasted for 20 hours. Some technical issues in the network led to the outages.
This is why Solana is trying to improve the network. It is taking measures to address such technical issues as its recent development activities indicate.
However, according to the data from Coinmarketcap, the price of SOL has fallen by a significant percentage.