Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin expressed sympathy for competitor Solana (SOL) in a December 30 tweet. He said that “smart people” told him that Solana had a “smart developer community,” and suggested that opportunists who had been involved in the project in the past had been “washed away.”
Buterin also hopes that the Solana community “gets a fair chance to develop.”
Some smart people tell me that there is a smart developer community in Solana, and now that the bad opportunistic money is gone, the chain has a bright future.
It’s hard for me to tell from the outside, but I hope the community gets a fair chance to move forward
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 29, 2022
The price of SOL has fallen over 90% since its peak, partly due to the coin’s association with the failed FTX exchange. But Solana developers have argue that FTX collapsed does not harm the network itself.
Vitalik’s praise for Solana surprised many in the crypto Twitter community. Ari Paul from BlockTower Capital produced A tweet thread arguing that more crypto companies should follow Vitalik’s lead, as he explained, “This is how people who like to ‘compete’ with achievements, and think with positive numbers. One fun test you can give anyone about anything (provider services, fund managers, devs, whatever)[…]Ask them about competition in a positive way.
Not everyone was happy with Buterin’s statement. Former poker pro Mike McDonald saw the statement as a “good signal.”
I usually love Vitalik but this just seems like infantilizing virtue signaling to me. Like he thinks Solana devs haven’t heard of Ethereum yet?
– Mike McDonald (@MikeMcDonald89) December 29, 2022
Some critics also thought the timing of Buterin’s tweet was suspect. Would he praise Solana if it was still good?
This is like lebron playing some random high school 1v1 and then saying some nice things when Lebron wins 11-0 and the kid blows out his ACL.
— Kyle Decentral (@KyleLogiks) December 30, 2022
Solana was once dubbed the “Ethereum killer”, partly due to its high scalability. But it has also been criticized by some for being too centralized and unstable.