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 is just not optionally available, it’s survival.
The alternate was sparked by a Jan. 12 submit by which Buterin stated “Ethereum itself should move the walkaway check,” framing Ethereum as a base layer that ought to stay usable even when the neighborhood largely stops making substantive protocol adjustments.
“It should assist purposes which might be extra like instruments […] than like providers that lose all performance as soon as the seller loses curiosity in sustaining them,” Buterin wrote. “However constructing such purposes is just not doable on a base layer which itself will depend on ongoing updates from a vendor with a purpose to proceed being usable […] Therefore, Ethereum itself should move the walkaway check.”
Why Solana Can’t Afford To Ossify
Yakovenko replied that he “truly assume[s] pretty in a different way 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 depend 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 is just not merely technical stagnation; it’s a community shedding relevance to the individuals constructing and transacting on it.
Buterin’s “walkaway check” rests on the concept that Ethereum ought to attain a degree the place its usefulness doesn’t “strictly depend upon any options that aren’t within the protocol already,” even when the ecosystem continues bettering through consumer optimizations and restricted parameter adjustments. 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, aimed toward making Ethereum strong “for many years” and lowering the necessity for frequent disruptive upgrades.
Yakovenko’s critique is much less about these particular targets than the premise {that a} base layer ought to aspire to having the ability to “ossify if we need to.” In his view, ossification is just not a impartial milestone; it dangers locking in a protocol that may’t hold tempo with developer and consumer calls for. “To not die requires to at all times be helpful,” he wrote. “So the first objective of protocol adjustments must be to resolve a dev or consumer drawback.” On the similar time, he emphasised prioritization over maximalism: “That doesn’t imply resolve each drawback, in truth, 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 in a different way. Buterin needs Ethereum’s base layer to develop into sufficiently full that it could stay reliable even when the improve cadence slows dramatically. Yakovenko, in contrast, argues that Solana ought to assume upgrades will hold coming, however not essentially from anybody core workforce.
“It is best to at all times 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 growth orbit. He then pointed to a future the place governance and funding mechanisms may immediately 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 growth.
At press time, SOL traded at $133.84.
