Solana Set To Become The Most Decentralized Blockchain, Fund CEO Claims
Justin Bons, founder and CIO of Cyber Capital, has ignited a recent decentralization debate with a sweeping thesis that Solana’s economics and roadmap will propel it previous Ethereum on just about each decentralization metric over time. In an August 30 thread, Bons opens with the blunt competition that “Solana is destined to grow to be probably the most decentralized blockchain,” arguing that decentralization, in follow, is financed by payment income generated at scale—not by protecting {hardware} necessities artificially low. “Decentralization in the end comes from charges,” he writes, including that with out significant L1 scalability “Ethereum loses the sport.”
Solana Destined For Decentralization Management?
Bons’s core claim rests on an explicitly financial mannequin of safety and governance. If helpful blockspace generates charges and people charges fund validator economics, the community can assist a broader, more healthy operator set. In his telling, Solana is already on this trajectory, whereas Ethereum’s rollup-centric method externalizes exercise—and the charges that include it—away from the bottom layer. “Charges are what’s going to in the end pay for almost all of safety, shortage & decentralization,” he asserts, positioning Solana’s aggressive L1 scaling as the trail that sustains these flows on-chain somewhat than exporting them.
From there, Bons turns to the scoreboard he thinks issues. He juxtaposes the 2 networks’ Nakamoto Coefficients, claiming “ETH’s Nakamoto Coefficient is 2! SOL’s Nakamoto Coefficient is nineteen!”—a comparability designed to dramatize the place, in his view, Ethereum’s staking market construction has drifted. He attributes the hole to Ethereum’s “resolution to not implement native delegation,” which he says allowed one liquid-staking supplier to “dominate staking as an alternative.”
In governance phrases, he attracts the starkest potential distinction: “ETH has centralized governance! SOL has decentralized governance!” The rhetoric is deliberately provocative, however it’s constant together with his broader thesis that decentralization just isn’t purely a {hardware} or validator-count contest; it’s an emergent property of fee-funded safety, stake dispersion and stakeholder energy.
A centerpiece of Bons’s argument is what he calls the “safety funds.” He fashions it as a operate of market capitalization, payment income and inflation, adjusted by staking participation and the assault threshold. By his math, Ethereum’s safety funds stands at roughly $50.5 billion whereas Solana’s is about $25.3 billion, resulting in his headline conclusion that “SOL value solely must double to surpass ETH’s security budget.” The purpose is much less the precise quantity than the route: he believes Solana’s larger staking participation and L1-retained charges make it the extra environment friendly safety engine per greenback of market cap—therefore his competition that Solana can overtake Ethereum’s safety footing even at a smaller valuation.
That financial engine, in Bons’s view, is inseparable from Solana’s scaling technique. He argues that the “ultimate blockchain design” should steadiness node necessities with utility, as a result of at ample scale utility produces the payment flows that, in flip, finance broader validator participation and stronger censorship resistance. Designs that fetishize ultra-low node necessities, he says, misinterpret the issue: “The ‘ETH perspective’ represents a very simplistic understanding of decentralization, the place they assume low node necessities = decentralization.” Against this, he frames Solana’s path because the “center method”—accepting larger node necessities to seize the utility-driven charges that then reinforce safety and decentralization.
Solana Vs. Ethereum
Bons additionally devotes substantial consideration to what he sees as Ethereum’s structural disadvantages. As a result of Ethereum “just isn’t scaling its L1 meaningfully in any respect,” he contends, the network lets Layer-2s “take the majority of fees,” weakening the bottom layer’s safety funds and ceding decentralization headroom in the long term. That design alternative, he suggests, additionally shapes governance: by rejecting on-chain stakeholder governance at L1, Ethereum centralizes efficient decision-making socially, whereas Solana—imperfect as it’s—has “established” an on-chain governance social contract that may evolve alongside validator economics. “Is SOL excellent? Completely not,” he concedes, “nonetheless, it’s nonetheless considerably higher than ETH in the long term in each single method, together with decentralization & utility!”
To underscore the primacy of scale on this framework, Bons reprises a chorus that has run via his analysis for years: “A blockchain that doesn’t scale is a failure.” The road captures each his funding lens and the causal loop on the coronary heart of his argument: throughput → utilization → charges → validator P&L → stake dispersion → censorship resistance. If that loop compounds on L1, he says, Solana’s decentralization will outstrip Ethereum’s.
Bons’s quantitative comparisons lengthen past summary fashions. He asserts that headline Ethereum validator counts are sometimes misunderstood, as a result of some advocates conflate 32-ETH validator keys with the variety of “bodily machines concerned in block manufacturing.” He prefers to match operator-level footprints and “actual” validator infrastructure; below that lens he cites figures of “ETH has 8.8k validators” and “SOL has 1.1k validators,” noting that Ethereum’s benefit on this metric coexists with a market capitalization that’s roughly 5 instances bigger. His takeaway is that uncooked validator counts, stripped of operator aggregation and economics, is usually a deceptive proxy for decentralization.
The thread culminates in a forward-looking declare: as Solana’s fee-funded safety and governance mature, “SOL will finally overtake ETH in all decentralization metrics.” He presents this as a consequence of divergent roadmaps somewhat than a tradition struggle. With L1 scaling and payment seize, Solana can “flip” the composition of its safety funds away from inflation and towards income, whereas Ethereum’s L2-heavy design leaves the bottom layer comparatively underfunded by charges. In his phrases, “when the safety funds lastly flips, all non-scalable chains can have no legs left to face on.”
At press time, SOL traded at $199.