If you treat this as financial or investment advice, you can take your lawsuit and go fuck yourself, because I’m but an earnest speculator. And now that my ass is covered, let me tell you why I converted most of my primary crypto holdings to Solana.
In short? I love oxygen. And Solana is basically the green blockchain. I think from a marketing perspective alone, it’s got a shot at becoming the star of this little Web 3.0 thing of ours. But there are a few more reasons on top of this that clinch it for me.
A blockchain’s most apt comparison in the real world is to big data cloud products without the big data or product, just the cloud. In the case of the BTC or ETH chain, it’s secured by a complex equation, so transacting with it requires massive amounts of computer power, with an environmental toll to match. Meanwhile, Solana, after only two years, has achieved the scale processing power of Google, so much so that a single transaction on the network requires the same energy as 2 Google searches.
Google Search is powered by Google Cloud, and their public costs are higher than their internal costs, so we’ve got a ways to go before the two are truly comparable. But while the energy consumption of BTC transactions continues to rise with the value of the coin / number of miners joining the network to secure it, and ETH remains bottlenecked by scaling issues that are creating prohibitively expensive transaction fees, Solana starts to look like the belle of this bear market cycle.
Now, obviously Bitcoin and Ethereum (the gold and silver of crypto, respectively) are still valued far higher than Solana, and considered by many to be safer bets. Bitcoin is largely being accepted in an institutional setting — U.S. mayors, international prime ministers, and OBJ alike have opted to accept their finances in BTC. Now, with the launch of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, they’ve created a Layer 2 to operate more like Ethereum, but in a way that doesn’t address the core energy consumption issue.
Ethereum, meanwhile, has been working on their scaling issues for years… and years. The ETH2 upgrade, rumored to reduce gas fees, was recently pushed back to 2023. Plus, Vitalek Buterin gives me Mark Zuckerberg vibes and I’m not here for it.
Enter Solana. Unlike BTC or ETH, there’s no strong mythology behind the token. The Solana Foundation continues blockchain’s tradition of incoherent Bond villain messaging, and the fact that only 39% of holdings belong to the community raises questions. The individuals or entities behind the other 61% of anonymous crypto wallets with stakes (belonging to to the team and investors) will have real sway in the monetary value of the token and whatever implications manifest from it.
However, Solana is also one of the fastest growing ecosystems on the blockchain: the price of SOL has increased by over 200% this year, from $1 to $260 at its peak this month. Plus, rather than securing itself via energy-costly safeguards, it’s repurposing the Torrent-style P2P file encryption that made the Pirate Bay a legend of our childhoods, and can now be entrusted to secure freedom and accountability for all without also burning down the forests and flooding the planet in the process.
Bitcoin’s the big name with the momentum right now and Ethereum’s the attractive dark horse in the public perception, but when I look to Solana, I see a competitive market advantage, great positioning, and a product-market fit. With timing being the last factor needed for disruption, I would argue that conditions couldn’t be better.
As a newly minted Solana-maxi, I want to thank @DanMulliganUSA and our sponsor Tidus Wallet for prompting me to get off my ass and check SOL out.
