Solana stake volume surpasses Ethereum, is the network security really higher?

Recently, there has been a viewpoint that, since the staking volume of Solana has surpassed that of Ethereum, it means that the security of the Solana network has exceeded that of Ethereum. However, this statement may be somewhat misleading. Let's take a look at the actual situation.

First, let's compare the staking data of the two networks:

• Ethereum: Approximately 34 million ETH, valued at about 61 billion USD
• Solana: Approximately 388 million SOL, worth about 58.7 billion USD

From this data, it can be seen that the staking value of Solana has indeed reached a level comparable to that of Ethereum. Considering that the PoS mechanism attack threshold for both networks is around 33%, on the surface, the theoretical attack difficulty for both appears to be similar.

However, in reality, the difficulty of attacking Ethereum is far greater than that of attacking Solana. This is mainly reflected in two aspects: node centralization and the maturity of the staking infrastructure.

Node Concentration

Assuming a hacker successfully infiltrates the data center of a mainstream cloud service provider through an advanced vulnerability. In this case:

• To control over 50% of the Solana network, you need to simultaneously control the top 43 nodes. This is difficult, but not entirely impossible.

• For Ethereum, since a single node can stake a maximum of 32ETH, an attacker would need to control over 1.18 million nodes, which is nearly an impossible task.

Even considering the possibility that an entity may operate multiple nodes, according to existing data, all registered Ethereum node operators combined account for only about 47.5% of the total stake, which is even below the 50% threshold.

The reason for this difference is that Ethereum, as a historically established public chain, has faced the threat of PoS attacks in the past, and therefore has made a lot of preparations to guard against this potential risk, including measures to encourage retail investors to participate in stake.

In contrast, Solana has higher requirements for node servers, with operational costs being 5 to 10 times that of Ethereum. This means that retail investors need to stake at least 10,000 SOL to break even, and the yield may not be better than that of large staking service providers.

The Maturity of Staking Infrastructure

There are many infrastructure projects specifically designed for staking in the Ethereum ecosystem, which are currently not available in Solana.

For example, a well-known staking service requires its node operators to use niche data centers and clients as much as possible to increase the diversity and risk resistance of the network. This service also allocates 4% of its Ether to support innovative infrastructure such as Distributed Validator Technology (DVT).

Another example is DVT technology, which allows multiple entities to jointly manage a node. For instance, a 3/4 threshold can be set for 4 people to co-manage, or a 7/10 threshold for 10 people to co-manage, greatly enhancing the reliability and security of the node.

It is worth noting that in Ethereum and most PoS networks, nodes going offline is also considered a form of "malicious" behavior. If 33% of the nodes go offline, the entire network could potentially collapse. Therefore, the importance of this infrastructure is self-evident.

Conclusion

Although Solana has approached or even surpassed Ethereum in terms of total staked funds, Ethereum still has a slight edge in network security due to the degree of decentralization of node distribution and the maturity of its staking infrastructure.

Of course, this does not mean that Solana is insecure. In fact, both networks have high security. It's just that Ethereum may perform more resiliently in the face of potential attacks.

With the continuous development of blockchain technology, we can expect to see more innovative security mechanisms and infrastructures emerging, further enhancing the security and reliability of various networks.