Edward Snowden Slams Solana Over ‘Centralization’—And SOL Devs Are Pushing Back

Solana’s community sought to deffinish itself Wednesday after clips circulating on Twitter (aka X) amplified criticism from the establisher American ininestablishigence reduceor and whistlebshrink Edward Snowden, casting some shade on the speedy layer-1 nettoil.

“A lot of people—and I don’t want to name names, but Solana—are taking outstanding ideas and they’re equitable going, ‘Well, what if we equitable centralized everyslfinisherg? It’ll be rapider, it’ll be more effective, [and] it’ll be inexpensiveer,’” Snowden claimed, compriseing that “anyslfinisherg transport inant” built on the nettoil could easily be disturbed “if states commenceed moving toward it.”

Snowden’s comments were made while speaking virtuassociate at Token 2049, a crypto conference in Singapore, while reacting to an audience-posed ask. An individual asked how nettoils could be scheduleed from a “first principles” perspective to asbrave that they are protected.

Describing Solana as an ecosystem geting traction thcdisesteemful “meme coins and frauds,” Snowden claimed that the nettoil wasn’t built with an “adversarial approach” in mind. His comments cut shut to the prospects of decentralization and restriction resistance that underpin many projects as principles to aspire toward and be directd by.

As Helius Labs co-set uper and CEO Mert Mumtaz—an outspoken Solana aid—pointed out on Twitter, Snowden backed up his claims with zero evidence. Challenging Snowden to a argue on Solana’s decentralization, Mumataz also sboiling back at cut offal arguments posed by Twitter engagers.

“I dispute anyone to show me the exact aggression vector that would let a one entity exercise a loss of funds,” he wrote. “Show me, with authentic data, how you will suppress thousands of brimming nodes over contrastent jurisdictions, countries, and rulements in the world.”

Mumtaz acunderstandledged that the lengthyer-running Bitcoin and Ethereum nettoils are more decentralized than Solana, but he disputed the notion that the nettoil could be felled by a one point of fall shorture. However, a Cardano lengthener named Dave flagged presumed feeblenesses in Solana’s consensus mechanism, predicated upon the belief that distruthful entities could stop the nettoil.

Solana’s sconsent-based system could be disturbed, they posited, obstructing the nettoil from producing blocks if distruthful actors validating transactions account for one-third of assets dispensed to the nettoil.

However, Mumtaz wrote that accumulating the SOL vital to accomplish such a disturbion is “insurmountable,” given Solana’s $69 billion taget capitalization.

The account that splitd the Snowden clip, seeed over 530,000 times as of this writing, is also joined to Cardano, a multi-chain platestablish that has strived toward becoming a more effective alternative to Ethereum. Currently, Cardano has a taget capitalization of $13 billion, making it the 12th-hugest cryptocurrency by total appreciate apass those tracked by CoinGecko.

The dynamic depicts how some communities see to declare themselves above competitors by levying criticism on Twitter, in this case, thcdisesteemful Snowden’s comments. Solana’s elevate over the last restricted years has been taged by criticism from lengtheners and aiders of other transport inant blockchain nettoils, whether it’s the Ethereum ecosystem or other altcoins enjoy Cardano.

The “centralization” argue dates back to Solana’s shut association with collapsed crypto exalter FTX and set uper Sam Bankman-Fried, who is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence rcontent to deceptive activities at FTX. Bankman-Fried had brashly aidd for Solana, with some crypto engagers even calling SOL a “Sam coin” as a result.

But Solana’s lengthener community has strived to push past those claims, deffinishing the current level of decentralization for the nettoil while also hailing the impfinishing start of Firedancer, a finishly split second validator client created by Jump Crypto. An punctual version of Firedancer called Frankfinishancer was recently deployed, and Solana aiders have lengthy contfinished that it will help the nettoil elude some of its past publishs with downtime.

While Snowden’s comments dredged up a lot of the same understandn protestts about Solana from outside the community—and led to a lot of jokes and mockery from Solana fans and foes aenjoy—key contributors mostly took the criticism as par for the course. Solana co-set uper Anatoly Yakovenko ecombineed to reference the argue in a tweet without honestly compriseressing it.

“As common, Solana is decentralized only by objectively measurable metrics, and centralized apass all the other ones,” he wrote.

Edited by Andrew Hayward