Web 3.0 is the next generation of the internet that’s being built right now. It brings decentralization and token-based economies to the world, and exciting projects are competing to be at the center of it. Two of the most important projects are Tezos and Solana. They are both blockchains running cutting-edge technology that boast speed and scalability features that leave Bitcoin and Ethereum in the dust.
In this article, we’ll compare Tezos vs Solana to see which is likely to be the driving force of Web 3.0, including their technologies, design ideologies, and NFT capabilities.
Tezos
Tezos is ranked #39 on the list of top cryptocurrencies. It is a smart contract blockchain that’s similar to Ethereum in its overall design and mission. Its main point of differentiation is its technology and its Liquid Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism. It’s built for scalability and high transaction throughput. It’s currently capable of 40 transactions per second, or roughly double Ethereum’s number. Moreover, the TPS is set to skyrocket to 1,000 with the upcoming Octez v13 release.
Multilanguage Approach
Developers creating dApps for Tezos enjoy flexibility in the programming languages they can use. The Tezos blockchain has support for LIGO, SmartPy, Morley, Fi, Archetype, and many more languages. This increases the number of developers that can work with Tezos.
User Governance
Tezos attempts to improve the often chaotic governance model of Bitcoin with a governance process that’s designed to avoid hard forks of the blockchain. Members of the Tezos community can propose upgrades for the network and then network validators vote on those they think are worth pursuing. If a proposal is popular enough, it then goes through a further voting and adoption process.
Decentralized Upgrades
Using the governance process outlined above, it’s possible for Tezos to carry out decentralized upgrades in a safe and efficient way. The process is much faster and safer than hard forking the blockchain, the method the Bitcoin blockchain must use for any major upgrades. This helps explain how Tezos manages to keep its tech on the cutting edge, while Bitcoin is rarely upgraded or improved.
These features put together make Tezos a great blockchain for hosting NFTs, with fast and cheap transactions and constantly upgrading technology. However, Tezos hasn’t got the speed and level of community adoption of Solana.
Solana
Solana ranked #9 in crypto and is also a smart contract platform. It touts itself as the fastest blockchain in the world, with up to 65,000 transactions per second. It’s also extremely scalable and keeps low transaction costs even at high loads. The current transaction cost is just $0.00025.
Tower BFT
Tower BFT is Solana’s optimized implementation of Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT). This is a consensus algorithm that allows the network to come to a consensus, even when there are a number of malicious nodes present. It means the network is highly resilient to attack. But, pBFT is known to have low scalability, and Solana’s Tower BFT drastically improves on this and makes it a viable consensus technology on the blockchain.
Gulf Stream
Gulf Stream is another technology that allows Solana to achieve extremely high transaction throughput. It allows validators to forward transactions to upcoming leaders, which enables them to process transactions ahead of schedule and keep the blockchain processing at maximum speed.
It’s the combination of these technologies that make Solana possibly the fastest blockchain in the world. It’s an extremely fast and scalable blockchain that’s ideal for NFTs in theory. However, Solana has had some technical problems and blockchain outages in the past.
Tezos vs Solana: Head-to-Head Comparison
| Tezos | Solana | |
| Consensus model | Proof-of-Stake | Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-History |
| Block time | 60 seconds | 400ms |
| Gas fee | $0.01 | $0.00025 |
| Use cases | Decentralized Finance Apps, Decentralized Exchanges, Games, NFTs | Decentralized Finance Apps, Decentralized Exchanges, Games, NFTs |
| Throughput | 40 transactions per second | 65,000 transactions per second |
| Smart contracts | Yes | Yes |
| dApps | Yes | Yes |
| NFT | Yes | Yes |
| On-chain governance | Yes | Yes |
| Data privacy | Strong | Strong |
| Public or private | Public | Public |
Conclusion
Weighing up the above technologies and stats, it’s clear that Solana is a superior blockchain for decentralized apps and NFTs to Tezos. It is faster, more scalable, and has lower operating costs. This may account for why Solana has much wider adoption and over 10x the market capitalization of Tezos. However, Solana will need to also improve its reliability if it is to maintain this advantage over Tezos. If you want to invest in Solana or Tezos, you can anonymously buy tokens at https://godex.io/.
