Solana's stake market capitalization is close to Ethereum, but there is still a gap in network security.

Recently, there is a view that since Solana's stake has surpassed that of Ethereum, it means its network security has exceeded that of Ethereum. However, this statement is somewhat misleading.

Let's first take a look at some data:

• The current staking amount of Ethereum is about 34 million ETH, worth approximately 61 billion US dollars.
• The current stake amount of Solana is approximately 388 million SOL, worth around 58.7 billion dollars.

From the data, Solana's staking market capitalization has indeed approached that of Ethereum. Considering that both of their PoS mechanism attack thresholds are around 33%, the theoretical attack difficulty seems to be quite comparable.

However, in practice, attacking Ethereum is much more difficult than attacking Solana. There are two main reasons: node centralization and the maturity of the staking infrastructure.

Node Concentration

Assume an extreme situation occurs: hackers successfully invade the data center of a mainstream cloud service provider using a 0day vulnerability.

For Solana, controlling more than 50% of the network only requires simultaneously controlling the top 43 nodes. Although it is very difficult, it is not completely impossible.

For Ethereum, since a single node can stake a maximum of 32 ETH, controlling the network would require managing 1,187,000 nodes, which is nearly an impossible task.

Even considering that an entity may operate multiple nodes, according to data from the Rated platform, all registered Ethereum node operators together only account for 47.5% of the share, which still does not reach the 50% attack threshold.

The fundamental reason for this difference lies in the fact that Ethereum, as an earlier public chain, has experienced real PoS attacks, and therefore has made ample preparations to prevent such potential risks, such as encouraging retail investors to participate in staking.

The 32 ETH staking threshold of Ethereum is relatively low, while Solana has higher server requirements, with operational costs being 5-10 times that of Ethereum. This means that retail investors in Solana need to stake at least 10,000 SOL to break even.

Maturity of Staking Infrastructure

In the Ethereum ecosystem, several staking infrastructure projects, including Lido and Obol Collective, have also done a lot of work in terms of security.

For example, Lido requires node operators to use niche data centers and clients as much as possible to increase the diversity of the network. In addition, Lido has also specifically allocated 4% of ETH to support infrastructure projects such as Distributed Validator Technology (DVT).

Obol is a typical application of DVT technology. It allows multiple entities to jointly manage a node, greatly enhancing the reliability and security of the node. For example, a node can be jointly managed by 4 people, requiring a 3/4 consensus to operate, so even if one node goes offline, the other nodes can promptly take over.

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

The uniqueness of Obol lies in its ability to achieve cluster management through a single client, where private keys (or their shards) are not uploaded to the chain, ensuring higher security through Distributed Key Generation (DKG) technology.

The infrastructure specifically designed for Ethereum staking is currently not available in the Solana ecosystem.

In summary, although Solana's stake market capitalization is approaching that of Ethereum, Ethereum still has certain advantages in terms of node concentration and the maturity of staking infrastructure. Of course, this does not mean that Solana is insecure; both are very secure networks. It's just that at the current stage, Ethereum still has a slight edge in network security.