Solana Labs CEO Says Ethereum-Style ‘Walkaway’ Thinking Is a Death Wish
Over the weekend, Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko pushed again on Vitalik Buterin’s newest case for Ethereum “ossification,” arguing that for Solana, steady protocol iteration just isn’t non-compulsory, it’s survival.
The alternate was sparked by a Jan. 12 submit wherein Buterin mentioned “Ethereum itself should move the walkaway take a look at,” framing Ethereum as a base layer that ought to stay usable even when the neighborhood largely stops making substantive protocol modifications.
“It should assist functions which might be extra like instruments […] than like companies that lose all performance as soon as the seller loses curiosity in sustaining them,” Buterin wrote. “But constructing such functions just isn’t attainable on a base layer which itself is dependent upon ongoing updates from a vendor in an effort to proceed being usable […] Hence, Ethereum itself should move the walkaway take a look at.”
Why Solana Can’t Afford To Ossify
Yakovenko replied that he “really suppose[s] pretty otherwise on this,” laying out a philosophy that treats adaptability as core to Solana’s worth proposition. “Solana must by no means cease iterating,” he wrote. “It shouldn’t rely upon 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.” In Yakovenko’s framing, the chance just isn’t merely technical stagnation; it’s a community shedding relevance to the folks constructing and transacting on it.
Buterin’s “walkaway test” rests on the concept Ethereum ought to attain a level the place its usefulness doesn’t “strictly rely upon any options that aren’t within the protocol already,” even when the ecosystem continues enhancing through consumer optimizations and restricted parameter modifications. He additionally sketched a set of medium-term protocol aims, starting from quantum resistance and scalable structure to long-lived state design and decentralization safeguards, geared toward making Ethereum strong “for many years” and lowering the necessity for frequent disruptive upgrades.
Yakovenko’s critique is much less about these particular objectives than the premise that a base layer ought to aspire to with the ability to “ossify if we need to.” In his view, ossification just isn’t a impartial milestone; it dangers locking in a protocol that may’t maintain tempo with developer and person calls for. “To not die requires to all the time be helpful,” he wrote. “So the first aim of protocol modifications ought to be to resolve a dev or person drawback.” At the identical time, he emphasised prioritization over maximalism: “That doesn’t imply remedy each drawback, actually, saying no to most issues is critical.”
A key overlap in each positions is a skepticism towards dependence on a single “vendor,” although they operationalize it otherwise. Buterin needs Ethereum’s base layer to develop into sufficiently full that it may stay reliable even when the improve cadence slows dramatically. Yakovenko, in contrast, argues that Solana ought to assume upgrades will maintain coming, however not essentially from anyone core staff.
“You ought to all the time depend on there being a subsequent model of solana, simply not essentially from Anza or Labs or fd,” he wrote, referencing main entities in Solana’s improvement orbit. He then pointed to a future the place governance and funding mechanisms might straight underwrite that work, suggesting “we’re more likely to find yourself in a world the place a SIMD vote pays for the GPUs that write the code,” a nod to each on-chain coordination and the rising function of AI-assisted improvement.
At press time, SOL traded at $133.84.
