The staking volume of Solana is on par with Ethereum; how does their network security compare?

Recently, there has been a view that the staking volume of Solana has surpassed that of Ethereum, implying that the security of the Solana network has exceeded that of Ethereum. This statement is somewhat misleading. Let's take a look at the actual situation.

According to the data:

• The staking amount of Ethereum is approximately 34M ETH, valued at around 61 billion USD.
• The staking amount of Solana is approximately 388M SOL, valued at around 5.87 billion USD

From the data, the staking volume of Solana is indeed comparable to Ethereum, and it was even slightly lower than Solana before Ethereum's rebound. Considering that the PoS mechanism attack threshold for both networks is around 33%, the theoretical difficulty of attacks seems to be consistent on the surface.

33% of the stake can obstruct block production, 51% can create a new longest chain, and 67% can directly enable a double-spending attack.

However, in practice, the difficulty of attacking Ethereum is far greater than that of Solana. Even assuming a success rate of 0.001% for attacking Solana, the difficulty of attacking Ethereum may be 0.0001%. Although the gap is significant, it is important to note that both are considered extremely low probability events.

The main reasons for this difference are twofold: node concentration and the maturity of the staking infrastructure.

Node Concentration

Assuming a hacker has successfully infiltrated the data center of a mainstream cloud service provider using a 0day vulnerability. In this case:

• Controlling more than 50% of Solana's nodes requires simultaneously breaching the top 43 nodes, which is very difficult but not impossible.
• A single node in Ethereum can stake a maximum of 32 ETH, so it requires controlling 1,187,000 nodes, which is almost an impossible task.

Even considering that an entity may operate multiple nodes, according to data from the Rated platform, all registered Ethereum node operators combined only account for 47.5% of the stake, which is still below the 50% threshold.

Ethereum, as an early public chain, has experienced real PoS attack threats, and therefore has made adequate preparations to prevent such potential risks, such as encouraging retail investors to participate in staking. The staking threshold for Ethereum is relatively low at 32 ETH, while Solana has high server requirements, with monthly operating costs being 5-10 times that of Ethereum. Retail investors need to stake at least 10K SOL to break even on the Solana network, and the yield is even lower than some optimized schemes.

Maturity of Staking Infrastructure

Multiple staking infrastructure projects in the Ethereum ecosystem are continuously improving network security. For example:

• A certain staking platform requires node operators to reduce the use of mainstream cloud services and increase the proportion of niche data centers. At the same time, it encourages support for niche clients, rather than solely relying on mainstream clients.
• The development of Distributed Validator Technology (DVT). This technology allows multiple entities to jointly manage a node, enhancing the reliability and security of the node. For example, a node managed by four people can be set to 3/4, so even if one node goes offline, the other nodes can immediately take over.

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

Some DVT solutions implement cluster management through a single client, which means that private keys (or their shards) do not need to be uploaded to the chain, thereby further enhancing security. This infrastructure, specifically designed for Ethereum staking, currently does not exist in the Solana ecosystem.

Conclusion

Although Solana and Ethereum are now close in terms of staking capital scale, Ethereum still has a slight edge in network security due to the degree of decentralization of node distribution and the maturity of staking infrastructure. However, this does not mean that Solana is insecure; both networks maintain a high level of security. Over time, as technology develops, this gap may gradually narrow.