Solana (SOL) is an open-source blockchain platform designed to host decentralised, scalable applications. As it has smart contract capability, Solana is often compared to Ethereum (ETH). I will be analysing Solana and comparing it to Ethereum and a new altcoin on the Ethereum platform – Big Eyes (BIG) to answer the question: Should you invest in Solana in 2022?
The Proof is in the Pudding: Solana’s Proof-of-History vs Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake
Consensus mechanisms are how a blockchain network validates transactions to prevent fraud, and stay secure. Blockchains such as Ethereum use proof-of-stake, which achieves consensus through participants (known as validators) using their cryptocurrency to ‘vote’ on legitimate transactions. These stakers are paid in newly created cryptocurrency over time.
Solana uses a proof-of-history consensus mechanism, which is built on the proof-of-stake mechanism used in blockchains such as Ethereum. Proof-of-history uses hashed timestamps to verify when transactions occur, acting effectively as a cryptographic clock. As a result, the network does not have to reconcile and order transaction times sent to it by different nodes on the system. This means that these nodes can focus more energy to efficiently process more blocks, making the network much faster, as each node in the network does not need to communicate to validate a transaction.
One of the main advantages of Solana over Ethereum is its lightning fast speeds and scalability. Solana can process as many as 50,000 transactions per second, and its average cost is $0.00025. To contrast, Ethereum can only handle less than 15 transactions per second, and has transaction fees that average around $1.68. With this information, it would seem that Solana would be a no-brainer to invest in over Ethereum. However, like everything, there are some downsides.
Outages and Security Issues
Solana experienced numerous outages between 2021-2022. In mid-September 2021, the entire network went offline after a surge of transactions exposed a bug in the system. It was shut down for 17 hours as a team of engineers were working to fix the issue. One question that may be ringing in your head – how can a theoretically decentralised network be shut down for maintenance as a centralised network would be? Well, it turns out that the top 5 data centres that have Solana nodes control 47.4% of the nodes. This is a glaring issue for many cryptocurrency investors, as many people invest in cryptocurrencies for their decentralised nature. Although networks like Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) may not allow for a huge amount of transactions to be processed, and are slower, they are more secure. Bitcoin and Ethereum have only suffered outages a couple times each over the span of 10+ years.
Solana’s Potential Gains
Solana (SOL) has enjoyed incredible gains of 12,000% in 2021, and at one point was the fifth largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of over $66 billion. However, Solana was also another casualty of the severe crash and by early October 2022, SOL had dropped to about $11.71 billion in market capitalisation. There is a chance Solana will rise again on the next bull run, however, the gains will be nowhere near close to what they were at this initial boom. If you are looking for explosive gains, investing in a meme coin is a high-risk, very, very, very high-reward investment. Meme coins like Shiba Inu (SHIB) have experienced immense gains of 14,044,998%, and getting onboard early is the key to blasting off to the moon with these cryptocurrencies.
Bullish on Big Eyes
Big Eyes (BIG) is a promising new meme coin with a focus on giving back to the environment. Unlike its competitors in the meme coin space such as Dogecoin (DOGE), Big Eyes has giving and charity built into its tokenomics. 5% of all tokens will be held in a visible charity wallet, and donated to charities focusing on marinelife conservation. Big Eyes has raised over $9 million in its presale, and only continues to build momentum.
Should you Invest in Solana?
From a user perspective, the decentralised applications (dApps) built-in Solana are fantastic. Purchasing NFTs, or other cryptocurrencies running on the Solana network are very simple and have very little commissions. Solana is a solid investment to make, but it comes down to your belief as to whether Solana can overcome these outage issues and centralisation problems. The fate of Solana will be decided by its resilience in the long run, and whether Ethereum will be able to scale and catch up to Solana’s blazing fast speeds. Also investing in Ethereum (ETH), and Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies such as Big Eyes (BIG) is a great way to spread the risk and get your eggs in more than one basket.
Big Eyes Coin (BIG)
Presale: https://buy.bigeyes.space/
Website: https://bigeyes.space/
Telegram: https://t.me/BIGEYESOFFICIAL
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