Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko has said he wants Solana to be an ever-evolving network, constantly updating to meet changing user needs, which contrasts with Vitalik Buterin’s vision of Ethereum as a self-sustaining blockchain.
“Solana should never stop iterating. It should not be up to any single group or person, but if it ever stops changing to fit the needs of its creators and users, it will die” – Yakovenko he stated in the post to X on Saturday.
His comments were in response to Buterin’s post, which stated that Ethereum needs to reach a point where it passes a “pass test,” meaning it becomes self-sustaining without developer influence for decades to come.
Ethereum and Solana are two of the leading blockchains in a sea of Layer 1 competitors.
Ethereum is by far the most decentralized Layer 1 clever contract blockchain and dominates the stablecoin and real-world asset tokenization business, while Solana is one of the faster networks that is arguably more popular in consumer applications and earns more in fees.
However, their planned paths to success could not have been more different.
Buterin wants to maximize decentralization, privacy and sovereignty in Ethereum – even at the expense of mainstream adoption – while Yakovenko wants Solana to be an evolving ecosystem that introduces fresh features to adapt to real-world needs.
Proponents of Buterin’s approach argue that adding too many features increases the risk of bugs, vulnerabilities, and unintended consequences of the protocol, while also increasing the attack surface for centralization.
However, proponents of Yakovenko’s “adapt or die” mentality believe that a hands-off approach leads to slower innovation and potential overtaking by faster-moving competitors.
Artificial intelligence may update Solana: Yakovenko in the future
However, Yakovenko said that updates to the protocol should come from a diverse community of authors, rather than a few teams of developers.
Related: Bitwise CEO Says 2026 Will Be a Real Bull Year for the Cryptocurrency Industry, Here’s Why
He even pointed to a future where Solana network fees could fund AI-powered development to write and improve Solana’s codebase.
“You should always count on the next version of Solana,” Yakovenko said.
Ethereum is not yet self-sustaining
Meanwhile, Buterin said there is still a lot of work to be done before Ethereum can adopt a hands-off approach.
Quantum resilience features, a more scalable architecture and a better blockchain model that resists centralization pressures are among the major improvements, Buterin said Ethereum must stand the test of time.
Warehouse: One indicator shows that the cryptocurrency is currently in a bear market: Carl “The Moon”
