The leading cryptocurrencies today have specific problems they solve and unique values that they bring to the marketplace. Bitcoin was created for encrypted transactions and as a store of value. You can easily keep your money safe from financial institutions with bitcoin. BNB was created to pay for fees on Binance while Tether was created as a stable coin to hold the dollar value of your assets in cryptocurrency. The developers of Ethereum created it to allow for smart contracts and host decentralized apps on its blockchain network. Ethereum has reigned supreme in this niche before Solana went in love in March 2020. In this article, we want to take a look at the major differences between Ethereum and Solana.
Differences between Ethereum and Solana
Speed
The transaction speed of Ethereum is 14.7 transactions per second while Solana can process up to 65,000 transactions per second. Ethereum’s slow speed gives Ethereum scalability issues and it happens to be a big problem in the crypto industry. The development team is already working on this issue as expected. We should see some improvement when the upgraded Ethereum 2.0 hits the market in 2022. For Dapp developers will have to use the blockchain as it is or opt for an internal solution. Solana on the other hand can
Community, launch date, and Market cap
The Ethereum community is far bigger than the Solana Network. It launched in 2013 and it has seen a steady rise in price and community since then. Currently, Ethereum has a market capitalization of over 500 billion dollars and it is the second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin. the Solana launched in March 2020 and even though it has received global acceptance and currently ranks as the 5th cryptocurrency with the largest market cap (up to 70 billion dollars), it will still have to scale higher before becoming as strong as Ethereum. Solana also has a large community and a large following. However, most D-apps and smart contracts are still being hosted on Ethereum.
Fees
Fees are one of the reasons the crypto community adopted Solana so fast. If you perform a transaction on the Ethereum network, you have to pay a gas fee. Most times, these gas fees cost about 20 dollars to 70 dollars. The more congested the network, the higher the gas fees. These gas fees might be a major issue for the average crypto traders who have a 2,000- or 3,000-dollar investment portfolio. However, the whales’ rich developers of Silicon Valley have no problem paying these fees. They know that Ethereum represents quality and their transactions are completely safe and secure.
Both Solana and Ethereum are top ranked cryptocurrencies that offer safe grounds for investment. However, with the current market trends, if you are unsure of when to start investing with your real money, you can look out for the best free trading platform where you master the trading pattern. When you think you’re ready, you would have acquired the necessary experience to invest real cash.
Smart contracts
The way smart contracts run on Solana is different from the way smart contracts run on Ethereum. On Solana, smart contracts are stateless and they represent just program logic. They use parallel smart contracts runtime and their data and code are decoupled. Ethereum becomes immutable once it is executed and it is deployed into an individual account.
Programming language
While Solana is written in Rust, Ethereum is written in solidity. Rust is a high-level, general-purpose programming language while solidity is an object-oriented programming language specifically used for writing Ethereum smart contracts.
By interpretation, this means that the programming of Ethereum is designed basically for Ethereum whereas, Rust is more relatable to use and can create several types of applications like blockchains and games.
Mempool
Ethereum like you may already know uses Blockchain technology, which mean that every transction with Ethereum would have to be added to an existing chain. This causes a delay in the acceptance of all its transactions. On the contrary, Solana does not have any mempool. Its transactions are almost instantaneous because there is nothing like a waiting area before the transaction gets approved.
Summary
If you are thinking of investing in either Ethereum or Solana. We would advise that you go for both. Ethereum is set to release Ethereum 2.0 in 2022 and it is surely going to rock the crypto space. Also, Solana’s blockchain network is still in Beta testing and by the time developers are done with the entire development, we will see some beautiful evolution in the crypto space. Web 3 is currently being built on decentralized networks and both of them have great potential for the future.
