Solana set to become Ethereum’s L2 saving grace – How?

Posted: September 20, 2023

• The SVM’s enhanced performance has made it Eclipse’s preferred option over the EVM.
• Ethereum would provide the support for validation on the network. 

“By boosting others, you will boost yourself. A little competition is a good thing, and severe competition is a blessing.” This quote by Jacob Kindleberger seems to be the path that Solana [SOL] wants to follow based on the latest update provided by a new project.

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Solana for scale, Ethereum for settlement

The rationale for this conclusion can be found in Eclipse mainnet’s introduction of the Ethereum [ETH] SMV L2. As a modular rollup stack, Eclipse aims to provide settlement, data availability, and high-performance execution for its users.

Because of this, Solana, which was once dubbed the “Ethereum Killer” now has to work in conjunction with Ethereum on Eclipse. According to the Eclipse mainnet disclosure, the SVM, a tag for the Solana Virtual Machine would be the best execution environment for its objective.

In quick summary, the SVM is the execution infrastructure that enables smart contracts/programs on the network. Unlike the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the SVM provides enhanced performance than EVM, which is the dominant machine standard in the blockchain industry.

So, Eclipse mainnet concluded that Solana would be very important in enhancing the speed and scale of the project. With respect to fees, the project noted that Solana was the preferred option, explaining that,

“Solana’s amazing work on local fee markets solves this cross-app state contention. In its current implementation, the scheduler prioritizes transactions without conflicts, allowing conflict-free transactions to go through with lower fees.”

To back up its decision, Eclipse provided the image below, comparing Solana transfers and swaps with others.

Source: Eclipse

Solana wins this round

However, the addition of Solana use cases to the Ethereum L2 does not mean that Ethereum would not play any important role in the overall functioning of the project. According to Eclipse, Ethereum’s security and liquidity would be critical to settlement on the network. 

Furthermore, the post mentioned that Ethereum would provide the means of validating bridges using the canonical chain. For context, the canonical chain is the authoritative blockchain after a split or hard fork occurs. Eclipse noted that,

“This allows our users to gain certain security properties from Ethereum. The bridge will validate all Eclipse transactions, preventing the submission of invalid states.”

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Additionally, Eclipse mentioned that it was not entirely ignoring the EVM. But it also noted that a more performant execution like Solana remains important to the project. While admitting its love for Ethereum innovation, Eclipse also hailed the other, saying, 

“If a more performant execution layer comes along someday, we’ll be incredibly excited to see it deployed as a competitive Ethereum L2. Until then, the SVM remains the standard.”