Introduction
We will go over if you Should You Learn Solana Or Ethereum.
Did you know that both crypto frameworks offer a lot of promising and have their own strengths?
In this article I will try to break down their differences and which one is more promising for you to learn. Since this is a subjective thing and depends a lot of what your goals are I will give you perspective from different point of views.
We will break down this in the following sections:
- What is Solana and what backs it up
- What is Ethereum and what backs it up
- Level of effort each of them requires from you
- Learning curve and difficulties with each framework (pros/cons)
I personally have used both of them extensively in the past and have done successful projects so I know their weaknesses and strengths. Hopefully my point of view on it will help you decide which one to go with.
Should You Develop In Solana
I quite frequently get this question asked. I think the answer depends on what you want to accomplish. Lets start by going through if Solana is a good framework to use or work on.
The short answer is that yes I think it’s a great place to start with.
The longer answer is the list of reasons I’m going to present you with below:
- It is based on a great programming language Rust. Rust is a newcomer and offers a lot of the advantages a language such as C had but offers a lot more new and more modernized things to make it even better. The speed of Rust is great which allows Solana to scale and do more with less hardware.
- The costs of the Solana network are extremely low which allows you to do smart contracts with very low fees. This consequently means it opens up their network to people with lower budgets but also with people that are now starting out and want to test things out.
- Solana offers a very rich API/SDK (referenced below) on getting started and generally offering re-useable components that you can use across your code base without any issues.
- There’s a lot of resources online that offer answers to your questions and if you get stuck you can likely have it resolved by visiting one of the many forums out there that has information on your issues.
- A lot of the boilerplate code that is required in other smart contract coding examples is taken care off with initializer functions. This means you can focus on your business logic and what you want to achieve further extending creativity and contributing to the Solana network.
- There’s a lot of investment in Solana which means it’s not going away anytime soon. Sure we have heard a lot of bubbles in the past but Solana also have a lot of smart contracts and it’s constantly getting more added to it making things better.
I think the list above should make it pretty apparent that I believe you should develop in Solana.
Should You Develop In Ethereum
In this section, we will cover whether or not it’s worth developing in Ethereum. Similar to Solana Ethereum is another smart contract network that has pre-existed to Solana. Recently it switched over to proof of stake reducing its footprint by 99% becoming greener, faster, and better.
Again I think the short answer if you should develop in Ethereum is yes again.
To learn more details on why that’s a yes you can see my long explanation below of bullet points:
- Ethereum is literally the biggest smart contract network in existence. It has a plethora of apps that rely on it and are actively being used today which makes it extremely safe and reliable.
- It has one of the biggest investments that ever took place in fact it’s the second larger crypto currency by market cap right now. If things continue on it’s growth I believe it’s going to eventually surpass bitcoin in market cap.
- There’s a lot of resources online that offer answers to your questions and if you get stuck you can likely have it resolved by visiting one of the many forums out there that has information on your issues.
- It’s based on it’s own programming language called Solidity. The advantage of this is that the language is customized for crypto code and it’s enhanced for it making it very easy to implement and start from zero if you have no experience in coding.
- There’s a lot guides as the community for Solidity is big and their online documentation and guides is pretty good too.
- The fees lately have gone up but overall they are still on the lower end of what I consider expensive for transactions. This may change in the future but currently it seems to have stabilized a bit.
- There’s a lot of transactions taking place daily without any issues at all. Offcourse this has a negative side to it too because of so many transactions the network I feel is a bit congested and not as responsive as Solana.
- There’s a lot of money to be made in Ethereum as a lot of companies are moving towards it to satisfy their business needs so if you come as one of the first ones here there’s still a lot of opportunity to get your idea going and working.
This list may seem huge but there’s a lot of good things to say on why you should consider developing in Ethereum.
Should You Learn Solana Or Ethereum
So now we are getting to the difficult question on if you should learn Solana or Ethereum. I will try to break this down with some bullet points to give you some perspective.
You should learn Solana if any of the blow applies to you:
- You prefer to take a slightly bigger risk and higher reward, since Solana is still relatively newer than Ethereum there’s much more opportunity here and more money to be made.
- You want to work on a better technically backed platform
- You want to prioritize speed and bleeding edge technology
- You want to be a pioneer in the future of smart contract transactions and don’t mind losing a bit of stability in your system
- You prefer Rust over Solidity as a programming language
You should learn Ethereum if the below applies to you:
- You prefer a more stable situation where you know your investment of time and effort will pay off eventually and it won’t be going away
- You are ok with not being bleeding edge in terms of technology
- You are ok with average transaction speed smart contracts
- You are ok with paying a bit higher fees for your transactions
- You want a big ecosystem with other smart contract companies to work with
- You prefer Solidity over Rust as a programming language
Should A Beginner Learn Solana Or Ethereum
Now that we gave some reasoning for the general developer if they should go with Solana or Ethereum for their coding needs I’m going to try and address this question if you are a beginner in both programming and crypto currencies.
The short answer here is that I believe you should go with Ethereum if you are now starting out.
The long elaborate reasoning is the list below on why I think Ethereum is more friendly to new users.
- Ethereum offers a brand new language called Solidity that’s designed for smart contracts and crypto so someone starting out will have an easier time learning it with more examples to reference.
- Solidity further can accomplish overall more with less code meaning you don’t need to implement a lot of things from scratch the language and libraries take care of this for you. So a beginner will not have to worry about certain programming principles that a Rust programming language would require.
- Ethereum and Solidity just has a larger community that means for you as a beginner you can find more resources easier without searching a lot. Having said that the Solana/Rust community is also fairly big and good.
- There’s more examples and other projects to reference from and chances are you will also be able to find a mentor easier to get you started.
The list above entails some of the reasoning as to why I believe Ethereum is better for beginners than Solana to start with.
Conclusion
We were able to successfully go over if you Should You Learn Solana Or Ethereum, hopefully I answered any questions you may have had and helped you get started on your quest of selecting the right crypto project for your needs.
If you found this useful and you think it may have helped you please drop me a cheer below I would appreciate it.
If you have any questions, comments please post them below or send me a note on my twitter. I check periodically and try to answer them in the priority they come in. Also if you have any corrections please do let me know and I’ll update the article with new updates or mistakes I did.
Which project would you choose?
I personally like both of them for their strengths. I think the future will probably involve a lot of Ethereum despite it’s negatives because it’s a larger ecosystem. I do not think it’s better in anyway but their transition to non-mining will make it’s case stronger.
If you would like to find more articles related to Crypto:
You can find some information on stuff I referenced here: