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

Recently, some have suggested that the stake volume of Solana has exceeded that of Ethereum, and based on this, inferred that the security of the Solana network has surpassed that of Ethereum. Although this statement may seem reasonable at first glance, it is actually quite misleading. Let's delve into this issue.

First, let's take a look at the specific data:

• The staking amount of Ethereum is about 34M ETH, worth approximately 61 billion USD.
• The stake amount of Solana is approximately 388M SOL, valued at about 58.7 billion USD.

Numerically, the two are indeed very close, and before the rebound in Ethereum's price, the staking value of Solana was even slightly higher than that of Ethereum.

Considering that the PoS mechanism attack threshold of both networks is around 33%, it seems that their theoretical attack difficulty is consistent on the surface. Below this threshold, an attacker can hinder block production; if they control 51% of the stake, they can create a new longest chain; and controlling 67% of the stake allows for a direct double-spending attack.

However, in practice, the difficulty of attacking Ethereum far exceeds that of attacking Solana. This is mainly determined by two factors: node centralization and the maturity of the staking infrastructure.

Node Concentration

Suppose there is a hacker who can infiltrate mainstream cloud service providers and wants to control more than 50% of the nodes in the Solana network. He needs to simultaneously breach the top 43 validator nodes. While this is difficult, it is not entirely impossible.

In contrast, a single node on Ethereum can stake a maximum of 32 ETH, which means that an attacker would need to control over 1.18 million nodes to reach the 50% threshold, which is nearly an impossible task.

Even considering that an entity may operate multiple nodes, according to Rated's data, all registered Ethereum node operators together account for only 47.5% of the total stake, which is even less than the 50% attack threshold.

The fundamental reason for this difference lies in the fact that Ethereum, as a public chain that has experienced early PoS attacks, has made extensive preparations to guard against such potential risks, such as actively encouraging retail investors to participate in stake.

The staking threshold for Ethereum is relatively low at 32 ETH, while Solana has high server requirements, with monthly operating costs being 5 to 10 times that of Ethereum. This means that retail investors in Solana need to stake at least 10,000 SOL to break even, and the yield is even lower than that of some large staking service providers.

Maturity of Staking Infrastructure

Many staking service providers in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as Lido and Obol Collective, have done a lot of work to enhance network security.

For example, Lido requires its node operators to try to use niche data centers instead of mainstream cloud services like Amazon, while also encouraging the use of diverse client software. In addition, Lido has specifically allocated 4% of its ETH to support the development of distributed validator technology (DVT) infrastructure.

Obol is a representative of DVT technology. It allows multiple participants to jointly manage a validator node. For example, a node can be set up to be co-managed by 4 people, requiring at least 3 of them to be online for normal operation. This mechanism greatly enhances the reliability and security of the node.

It is worth noting that in Ethereum and most PoS networks, node downtime is also considered a form of "malicious" behavior. If 33% of the nodes go offline simultaneously, the entire network will collapse.

The uniqueness of Obol lies in its ability to achieve node cluster management through a single client, which means that users' private keys (or fragments of private keys) do not need to be uploaded to the blockchain, thereby providing higher security. This technology is implemented through Distributed Key Generation (DKG).

Currently, the Solana network has not developed such a mature staking infrastructure.

Conclusion

Although the total value of Solana's staking has approached that of Ethereum, in terms of network security, Ethereum still has a slight edge 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 not secure. In fact, both networks maintain a high level of security. It's just that at the current stage, despite the comparable scale of funds, Ethereum still leads Solana in certain key aspects.

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