Bankless Takes | Solana vs Ethereum

Welcome to Bankless Bites, a new weekly show out of Bankless. A little like the weekly roll-up, but more opinions, less news, closer to touching on the conversations that are going around crypto of the week. Or really whatever me and Ryan want to talk about.

If you don't like our opinions, this show is probably not for you. Unfiltered, sometimes wrong, always fun. Three to five topics every single week, trying to get it under 30 minutes. Always an ambitious endeavor. This is our first rodeo on this show. So this show will change and adapt. But the idea of the show is to be pretty raw and uncut. No filter. Ryan, what are we talking about this week?

Uh we got four topics of the week, David. Number one, I want to talk to you about bankless breakpoints. Okay. Actually, bankless showed up at breakpoints and you went. And a lot of people were upset about that. How dare you? So we're gonna talk about

People liked it.

Yeah. Uh also Solana versus Ethereum. That has been the subject this week all over crypto Twitter. And I think that's where we're getting inspiration from the show, honestly, is like things that people are talking about on crypto Twitter.

We've got

to talk about.

Uh speaking of that, we gotta do a feelings check in because you are disappointed with somebody this week. I I believe you have some disappointment with Chris Berninski. Yeah.

Yeah, with

I wanna I wanna unpack that. I wanna I wanna see where that comes from. Uh get into the kind of the emotion layer of that.

David's disappointment with dad.

Also, uh what should bankless do about Solana? That has been a a conversation that I think we need to have. Um, David, before we get in, you're gonna speed run through the ads. So uh let's play it. All right, first topic. David, you went to Solana Breakpoints conference. Here's you. You are uh interviewing, it looks like Antoli and Austin from Solana. So first, how dare you? People were upset about this. Some people were upset about this. I I want to tap into why you decided to go to a Solana conference in the first place. A lot of people said bankless showed up. I think because you are a representative of bankless, I would say that that's true. We showed up. Uh, yet also it was you, it wasn't the rest of the team. Right. I I didn't show up, for instance. What it almost sounds like I'm making like excuses for this or something, or like I'm padding in some way, but oh my god, you just went to a conference. Who cares? Right. Uh, but but somehow this shows some significance. Anyway, give me the context of like why did you decide to go to this thing anyway?

Yeah, there's like so much context. First, it was like I signed up for this talk at ETH Lisbon. I wanted to go to ETH Lisbon. I was gonna go to Turkey afterwards for DevConnect. And then like Solana Breakpoint was just like, oh, it's just like in Amsterdam and it's like two days before. So I'll just go two days earlier and just like why not? Uh then I canceled my DevConnect plans, but that's that's a uh different story. Um the other the other answer is just like you say that like people were disappointed in that I went to uh Solana, and I don't really want to like overemphasize that. I think like some people are like, uh some Ethereum people are like, yeah, why are you guys legitimizing what we consider to be an illegitimate project? But I would

I think it feels like imagine if a Democrat went to showed up at a Republican conference.

Yeah. I mean, it's like the tribal games are are saying that. I don't think that really scales out to like all of Ethereum, but who knows? But yes, some people are like, what are you, what are you doing? And granted, this is the first non Ethereum conference that I've ever gone to, right? Uh like either I go to something like totally neutral, like um Mazari mainnet, or I go to Ethereum events. Um, so this is this is like a step out. Like, why? What was my motivation? It's like, well.

Solana is having a narrative moment in this present time. Uh Sol Price is pumping. I decided to go before Sol Price moved. Um, so I bought my ticket like months ago. Um, I just like I don't know how to get a vibe for Solana that isn't through Twitter, which is a terrible place to get a Solana vibe because the Solana community like owns the Solana narrative on crypto Twitter at this present moment. And then also, like, my Ethereum circles aren't going to do it either. And so, like, how do I go figure out for myself what Solana is and what's real and who goes to Solana conferences and how many people go? I just have to go see for it for myself. And also, Amsterdam is a nice city.

You've been to kind of generic uh you know blockchain crypto conferences before, but um you haven't gone to like a Cardano conference, for example.

Think Cardano conferences exist and I would also not go to one.

Okay, and or a Tezos conference, for instance. Okay, so so what about Solana? So uh what is different? I mean, if you if you talk to some people, they'll say there's really only a few communities that are really building. Uh, one is of course Ethereum and its layer two ecosystem, another is Cosmo still building in the Solana. Is it as simple as that, that there's just signs of life? And then by the way, Cardano people would say, Oh, you're missing this whole world out there, you know, bankless idiots and shills and and morons. And you should, you should, you should come see what we're building. But you you went to Solana, you didn't go to these other events. Why?

Um

the the only answer I have is like that Solana seems to have captured a narrative. And there are people that I respect and trust in this base that say that like what Solana's building is real. And these are people like our friend uh Mike Eppolito from Blockworks, for example, and um John Charbonne, uh who will also like kind of pad as like, well, you know, Solana tech is good. The why are people investing in the ecosystem, I think, is like not it's not it's not a full Solana bowl case, but like Solana has some sort of narrative. They have a narrative that separates them from Tezos or Cardano or

Like building. I mean, there's stuff being built, right?

Yeah, there's stuff being built, yes. Um, yeah. Uh and I they have uh Solana has occupied a certain part of the design space that no one else has. Uh and s and I mean that's also true for every other ecosystem, but I don't know. I think like the Solana movement, Solana effort is unique and has captured certain set of of builders and mind share of at least in the narrative space. And this is something we'll talk about later, but just like they've they've captured some sort of territory, and I want to go see why.

Okay, so give me your takeaways. What's the how does it contrast from say an Ethereum conference?

Yeah, like the average Solana person, and I would call like this low level systems engineer, system developers, like the ex Tesla, X um Apple, X SpaceX type of people that are just like software builders that are very tapped into what hardware is. And like this should come as no surprise. Like Solana is all about hardware, hardware, hardware. Um

Uh and I just want to and that this is like the the the people that I'm meeting and the takeaways that I have. Um and the I g I get in there, Anatoly's giving his main stage talk to on the opening day, followed by like they do like the whole parade of people, uh like all the the community leaders, all the builder leaders. Um

and like

The one thing I noticed it was hard not to notice is like they're kind of doing like main stage jabs at Ethereum.

Like like in in the the opening keynote programming of like the first five talks that lasted like the first hour, hour and twenty minutes. Like there was a handful of like jokes, jabs at Ethereum, just like and like we're doing more transactions per second than any layer three on Ethereum, right? Like, why do you we don't need layers, blah blah blah blah. Uh so like I

It's interesting that you say that because like I I would say in the earlier days of Ethereum conferences, there were definitely jabs towards Bitcoin, right? It's like

were there?

um, yeah. I I don't think that the entire community was like in contrast to Bitcoin, but like

um

You know, Bitcoiners didn't believe that uh Ethereum could run uh, you know, a full node, a full node, for instance. They were getting confused with the difference between an archive node and a f you know full node, stuff like this. Like there were definitely some kind of light, light jabs for sure.

My difference for why this is different versus that versus this is that Bitcoiners, Bitcoin Maximalists, were just creating absolutely just off-base falsehoods along the lines of you can't learn Ethereum full note. It was, it was just not even, it was actually straight up delusion. And so when like and I

don't know if it but that would like Ethereum jabs at Bitcoin that wasn't on the main stage, like that was in the crowds.

Right?

That's what that's what I would say. Anyways,

So what else?

uh what else? Um

Uh f uh one fifteen hundred people is a rough gut check. 1,000 to 1500 people, I think. Uh hosted in this like town that's pretty far away from uh actual Amsterdam, like a 20 to 30 minute drive. Cause they had like this entire campus. It was actually kind of a good move. So if you're gonna Solana was like a four day conference. Uh and so if you're gonna be at this four day conference, uh it was like a campus with different buildings and you could go from building to building to building. Uh and so they kind of like had this territory that was all to themselves and like different themes and different buildings, right? Uh

Did you feel like at any point you were like behind enemy lines? You were like invade invade like inviting another tribe? Was there ever the sense that uh it's like oh here's the here's the bankless guy. He he's here's an Ethereum guy, and what's he doing at a conference? Or is it very welcoming and

I've I've been behind enemy lines before. Uh back in my old POV days, I went to a Bitcoin uh Bitcoin meetup uh in San Francisco where it was me, CK, my old Bitcoiner co-host of the POV crypto podcast, and 50 Bitcoiners, including like people like Pierre Richard

Or totally on CK's side and not your side.

Oh, there's big they were Bitcoiners, bro. It was the it was the Bitcoiners

I mean Maximalist probably.

Yes, dude, it's

I'm a Bitcoiner.

it was like Pierre Richard and

And Bitstein, like everyone was a Bitcoiner. And like, yeah, there were some like teases, but it was very welcoming. And if the Bitcoin maxis can accept, and this was in 2019, if the Bitcoin maxis can accept Ethereum, Ethereum into their circle, I just knew that like this the tribal warfare on Twitter is does not show up in real life. And I had very strong convictions about that. And I just always know that that's true. And so going to the Solana conference, it wasn't really going to, it was a little bit like, oh, David from Bankless is at a Solana conference. It's a little bit of that. But it's mostly just like I I got the same level of like

Great to see you.

Recognition and

Your podcast.

like and you you don't get this a lot because you don't go to in real life uh conferences, but just like in real life, there's just no toxicity. People are everyone is people are nice, people like, and I I got an equal amount of just like, hey, thanks for doing what you guys do. You guys got me into crypto. I got that like at an equal amount at the Solana conference as I do it as any Ethereum conference.

Yeah, I think that's going to be a theme for the rest of this episode, which is just like peering in on social media. Do you know Sam Harris? He he quit Twitter. He's somebody's podcast I listen to a lot. And he describes like social media and Twitter specifically as like a funhouse mirror distortion of reality. And so you look into it and the the shape, the person reflecting back at you is just like this distorted, misfigured like perception of a person. And that's true when you look at other people through the funhouse mirror of social media and Twitter specifically. And people are just not like this in real life. There's a tendency to think like if you go on crypto Twitter, right now, especially, I think it's gotten worse in the last since I've joined uh crypto. Yeah. Uh it is a cesspool of toxicity. That's the way it feels, or it's just like shilling. It's like short term. It's like it is not real life. Right. And I I wonder if there's an element, David, that we're like, we're all in crypto, we're like two online, and we just like don't have real conversations, long form conversations in real life. Here's a guy who's always in the office. But even think of podcasts, Zoom. People are not assholes on Zoom the way they are on Twitter.

Great. But then also they were throwing mainstay jabs at an opposing ecosystem. So like it's a little bit of both, right?

Well what's wrong with that? What's wrong with the little

That's a little healthy.

Also, I will uh we need to move on to the next subject because we need otherwise we're gonna have another one.

subject is the same subject, David.