Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko mentioned he needs Solana to be a consistently evolving community, repeatedly updating to fulfill the altering wants of customers, contrasting with Vitalik Buterin’s imaginative and prescient of Ethereum as a self-sustaining blockchain.
“Solana must by no means cease iterating. It shouldn’t rely on any single group or particular person to take action, but when it ever stops altering to suit the wants of its devs and customers, it is going to die,” Yakovenko said in a publish to X on Saturday.
His remarks have been in response to a publish from Buterin, who mentioned Ethereum wants to succeed in some extent the place it passes the “walkaway check,” that means it turns into self-sustainable with out developer affect for many years to come back.

Supply: Anatoly Yakovenko
Ethereum and Solana are two of the main blockchains in a sea of layer 1 rivals.
Ethereum is by far probably the most decentralized good contract layer 1 blockchain and dominates stablecoin and real-world asset tokenization exercise, whereas Solana is likely one of the speedier networks that’s arguably extra standard for shopper apps and earns extra charges.
Their deliberate paths to success, nevertheless, couldn’t be extra totally different.
Buterin needs to maximise decentralization, privateness and self-sovereignty on Ethereum — even at the price of mainstream adoption — whereas Yakovenko needs Solana to be an evolving ecosystem that introduces new options to adapt to real-world wants.
Supporters of Buterin’s strategy argue that including too many options will increase the danger of bugs, safety flaws, and unintended protocol penalties, whereas increasing the assault floor for centralization.
These aligned with Yakovenko’s “adapt or die” mentality, nevertheless, suppose a hands-off strategy results in slower innovation and doubtlessly being overtaken by faster-moving rivals.
AI may replace Solana sooner or later: Yakovenko
Yakovenko, nevertheless, mentioned protocol updates ought to come from a various group of contributors quite than a number of improvement groups.
He even pointed to a future the place Solana community charges may fund AI-assisted improvement to write down and enhance Solana’s codebase.
“It’s best to at all times rely on there being a subsequent model of Solana,” Yakovenko mentioned.
Ethereum just isn’t self-sustainable but
In the meantime, Buterin mentioned there’s nonetheless loads of work to be achieved earlier than Ethereum can undertake the hands-off strategy.
Quantum resistance options, extra scalable structure, and a greater block-building mannequin that resists centralization pressures have been among the many important enhancements Buterin mentioned Ethereum must should cross the check of time.

