Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin shows sympathy for competitor Solana (SOL) in a December 30 tweet. He said he was told by “smart people” that Solana had a “passionate, smart developer community.” He also felt that the opportunists involved in the project had been “pushed out”.
Buterin also hopes the Solana community will have its “fair chance” to “thrive”.
Some smart people tell me that there is a community of serious smart developers in Solana, and now that the horrible opportunistic money has been washed away, the chain has a bright future.
Hard for me to say from the outside, but hopefully the community will have a chance to thrive
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 29, 2022
The price of SOL has fallen more than 90% from its all-time high. This is partly due to the coin’s association with the insolvent exchange FTX. Solana Developer saythat the collapse of FTX did not harm the network itself.
Crypto-Twitter was impressed by Vitalik Buterin’s praise for Solana. BlockTower Capital’s Ari Paul wrote on Twitter saidthat more crypto firms should follow Vitalik’s lead. He explained, “That’s how someone behaves who likes to compete and spread positivity. You can test people in a fun way (service providers, fund managers, developers, whoever). Just to ask competitive questions in a positive way.”
Not everyone buys Buterin’s praise. Former poker pro Mike McDonald took the comment as a dishonest compliment.
Normally, I like Vitalik, but this seems like an infantilizing signal of virtue to me. How does he think Solana devs haven’t heard of Ethereum?
—Mike McDonald (@MikeMcDonald89) December 29, 2022
Some people also criticized the timing of Buterin’s tweet. He was indirectly asked if he would have praised Solana as well if things were still going well on the network.
It’s like Lebron randomly playing a high school kid 1v1 and then saying a few nice things when Lebron won 11-0 and the kid exploded his ACL.
— Kyle Decentral (@KyleLogiks) December 30, 2022
Solana was once considered the “Ethereum killer”, especially because of its high scalability. The network has also been criticized for being too centralized and unstable.