Ethereum and Solana represent major innovations in the cryptocurrency industry. While Bitcoin introduced peer-to-peer digital payments infrastructure, Ethereum pioneered smart contracts, enabling developers to build decentralized applications. However, Ethereum faces limitations with its single-threaded gas-based architecture, where transactions process sequentially, leading to slow speeds and volatile gas fees. Solana addresses these challenges through multi-core architecture, parallel transaction processing and predictable fee structure, delivering higher throughput and lower latency—making it advantageous for both developers and users.
In addition, Ethereum and solana differ quite a lot from the point of view of development. In this article, we examine the key factors that set Ethereum and Solana apart from each other when it comes to development, including Core Architecture, account modal, transaction development, and development environment, with real-world examples.
Ethereum and Solana are both proof-of-stake blockchains generating blocks through validator-based staking. However, the process of adding blocks to the networks is not the same for each blockchain. At the time of its starting, Ethereum used proof-of-work algorithms for block generation, but with the new updates and the recent merge, it has switched to proof-of-stake.
Ethereum uses Gasper, a combination of Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget (Casper-FFG), and the LMD-GHOST fork choice algorithm. This combination forms the consensus mechanism that secures Ethereum.
Casper (Casper-FFG), a part of Gasper, upgrades certain blocks to a finalized state, ensuring network participants are synchronized with the regular chain. It was initially proposed for the transitional phase from a PoW-based chain to PoS during the Merge upgrade and now contributes partially to the larger Gasper algorithm. LMD-GHOST (Latest Message Driven Greediest Heaviest Observed SubTree) is a fork choice algorithm used to select the most valid and trustworthy chain among various forks. In case of a fork generating multiple new blocks, validators vote through attestation messages to determine which block to append to the existing chain. These attestations follow a path from the genesis block to the latest block (leaf block), selecting the block backed by the most recent attestations. this results in a lower TPS rate, with an average of 15-20 TPS.
While solana uses Tower BFT to achieve consensus It ensures the system operates correctly even if some nodes are malicious or unreliable. PBFT is a practical implementation of BFT that guarantees system finality and consistency by securing agreement on all transactions among all nodes. tower BFT adopts a variant of PBFT, with one fundamental difference: Proof of History (PoH) acts as a global clock before consensus. In Solana's implementation, PoH is used as the network clock, arranging the order of blocks, transactions, and data.
Solana utilizes PoH (Proof of History) to support PoS. To determine the cryptographic time between two events, a series of computational steps are required.
Solana Uses PoH and Tower BFT to effectively determine the order of blocks, transactions, and data through timestamp verification. Therefore, validators can conclusively decide on forks, opting for the chain most trusted by votes. Ethereum lacks a timestamp concept like PoH for overall state synchronization, forcing validators to calculate from previous hashes to select a fork. Conversely, Solana's Tower BFT, based on PoH, effortlessly achieves consensus without needing full block verification. this results in a lower TPS rate, with an average of 4000-4300 TPS.