There’s been a discussion about this lately and misinformation. So, today we will learn more about Solana and Polygon in this article. This article was written on March 30th.
Which one is faster, cheaper, and more decentralized?
The basics:
Polygon → ETH side chain or L2
Solana — -> L1
L2s: chains built on top of an L1 (like ETH) to develop solutions like scalability, fees, and more.
L1s: original base networks like ETH, SOL, etc.
The Nakamoto Coefficient is one of the ways to measure a chain’s decentralization. The Nakamoto Coefficient, first suggested by Balaji Srinavasan and Leland Lee, is a measurement of the minimum number of independent organizations that can act collectively to shut down a blockchain. It is named in honor of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. The Nakamoto Coefficient is the number of node operators who collectively hold more than one-third (33.33%) of the total stake on a typical Proof-of-Stake network.
Generally, the higher the number, the more secure. Solana has a coefficient of 32, while Polygon is at 4.
By this metric, Solana is more secure.
- Amount of developers
Solana has more developers than Polygon, according to Developer Reports by Electric Capital. A strong developer activity is crucial for blockchains and it shows a great signal of growth.
As of Dec 15th, 2022, Polygon has 253 full-time devs, 1.102 monthly devs, 4,265 total repos, and 2.2M commits.
SOL has 383 full-time devs, 2k+ monthly devs, 6k+ total reports, and 5M+ commits.
2. Cost of transactions
While Polygon fees are cheaper than ETH, it’s still not cheaper than SOL.
A FlipsideCrypto dashboard was created by the analyst Marqu that compares both blockchains in this standard. Check it below:
3. TPS (transactions per second)
What is TPS and why does it matter?
To put it simply, transactions per second (TPS) is a term used to describe how many transactions a blockchain network can perform in a second. TPS measures the speed of a network. The TPS of a network is significant because it gauges the network’s ability to handle transactions in real time and its capacity to scale in the future to support additional use cases and users.
Below, you will find insights that compare Solana’s and Polygon’s TPS. It doesn’t count SOL validator vote transactions.
SOL’s TPS is still faster than Polygon’s TPS. It is expected that with Firedancer’s (a validator client) proximate launch, it will become even faster.
Conclusion: While there are more things to cover in this article, Solana is more decentralized, cheaper, and faster than Polygon.
Personal views: I’m not a SOL maxi, I like several chains and I’ve used different ones, and I write about other chains (like ETH) as well.
However, I’ve had a great, pleasant experience with Solana, it’s fast, cheap, full of talented ppl, and has amazing UX. I like Solana a lot. This is not an attempt to minimize Polygon, I like it. And at the end of the day, teams building in crypto contribute daily to the industry.
Thank you for reading, if you liked this, consider following @suppvalen for more informative threads and articles.
