Original author: 0xTodd, Partner at Nothing Research
A few days ago, I saw a post saying: "The staking volume of Solana has now surpassed that of ETH. Does this mean that the security of the Solana chain has exceeded that of ETH?" This statement is so misleading that many people actually believe it.
Not at all. Let's look at some data:
The staking data for ETH is 34M ETH, worth about 61 billion USD; the staking data for SOL is 388M SOL, worth about 58.7 billion USD.
SOL has indeed reached the same level as ETH, and just a few days ago, before ETH's rebound, it was even slightly lower than SOL. (Data source: Beaconcha & Solana Beach). Considering that both have a PoS mechanism with an attack threshold of around 33%, the theoretical difficulty of attacking both seems consistent.
33% can obstruct block production, 51% can create a new longest chain, and 67% can directly double spend. However, in practical terms, the difficulty of attacking ETH is significantly greater than that of Solana.
PS: Of course, if we assume the success rate of attacking SOL is 0.001%, the difficulty of attacking ETH might be 0.0001%. Although the difference is substantial, it is important to note that both still belong to extremely low probability events. The reasons are (1) node concentration and (2) the maturity of staking infrastructure.
1. Node Concentration
Let's assume a scenario: there is a magical hacker who successfully hacks into the data centers of Amazon and mainstream cloud service providers using a 0-day vulnerability. Then, to control Solana > 50%, one would need to simultaneously take over the top 43 nodes. This is difficult but not impossible.
For ETH, however, a single node can stake a maximum of 32 ETH, so one would need to take over 1,187,000 nodes, which sounds like an impossible task. Of course, this calculation is unfair to Solana because, in essence, ETH is also operated by numerous node operators, and a single entity may own thousands of nodes. Currently, looking at the operators listed on Rated, you will find that all registered ETH node operators together account for only 47.5%, and they don't even reach the 50% threshold. It remains an impossible task.
The reason is that ETH, as an ancient public chain, has indeed experienced real PoS attacks in ancient times and has made many preparations to guard against this potential danger, such as encouraging retail investors to participate in staking. The 32 ETH threshold for Ethereum is not high, while Solana has high server requirements, with monthly costs being 5-10 times that of ETH, and this is just the entry level. Therefore, for retail investors to break even, they need to stake at least 10K SOL or more, and the yield is even lower than Jito.
2. Infrastructure Maturity
Many ETH staking infrastructures, including @LidoFinance and @Obol_Collective, have also done a lot of homework. For example, Lido requires nodes to use less of Amazon's data centers and more niche data centers. It encourages less use of mainstream clients and more support for niche clients. Additionally, Lido has set aside 4% of ETH for DVT infrastructure such as Obol and SSV. Obol is a DVT technology. You can think of it as your node being managed by a cluster rather than a single entity. For example, if four people co-manage a node, you can require it to be a 3/4 setup, so if one node goes offline, the other nodes can immediately take over. If you set it to 10, you can set it to 7/10, allowing for a maximum of three nodes to go offline.
Note: On ETH and most PoS chains, going offline is also considered a form of [malicious behavior]. If 33% of nodes go offline, the chain will become paralyzed. Moreover, the uniqueness of Obol lies in the fact that it achieves clustering through a single client, so your private keys (fragments) are not uploaded to the chain, making it more secure. This is achieved through DKG (I can share more about DKG later when I have time). Recently, Obol just launched on the mainnet, and those interested can check it out; @ebunker_eth can help.
Therefore, infrastructures like Obol, which are specifically prepared for staking on ETH, are currently not available on Solana. Of course, this is not to belittle one chain over the other; both chains are very secure. However, despite the financial stakes having reached the same level, in terms of security, due to node concentration and infrastructure maturity, ETH still has a slight edge.
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