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 will not be elective, it’s survival.
The trade was sparked by a Jan. 12 submit wherein Buterin stated “Ethereum itself should cross the walkaway check,” framing Ethereum as a base layer that ought to stay usable even when the group largely stops making substantive protocol modifications.
“It should assist functions which are extra like instruments […] than like companies that lose all performance as soon as the seller loses curiosity in sustaining them,” Buterin wrote. “However constructing such functions will not be doable on a base layer which itself is dependent upon ongoing updates from a vendor with the intention to proceed being usable […] Therefore, Ethereum itself should cross the walkaway check.”
Why Solana Can’t Afford To Ossify
Yakovenko replied that he “really suppose[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 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.” In Yakovenko’s framing, the chance will not be merely technical stagnation; it’s a community dropping 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 rely on any options that aren’t within the protocol already,” even when the ecosystem continues enhancing by way of 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, aimed toward making Ethereum sturdy “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 having the ability to “ossify if we wish to.” In his view, ossification will not be a impartial milestone; it dangers locking in a protocol that may’t preserve tempo with developer and person calls for. “To not die requires to all the time be helpful,” he wrote. “So the first purpose of protocol modifications must be to unravel a dev or person downside.” On the identical time, he emphasised prioritization over maximalism: “That doesn’t imply resolve each downside, the truth is, 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 desires Ethereum’s base layer to develop into sufficiently full that it may stay reliable even when the improve cadence slows dramatically. Yakovenko, against this, argues that Solana ought to assume upgrades will preserve coming, however not essentially from anyone core crew.
“It’s best 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 growth orbit. He then pointed to a future the place governance and funding mechanisms may instantly underwrite that work, suggesting “we’re prone 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.
