Solana CEO pushes back on Buterin’s blockchain longevity vision

Solana Labs’ Anatoly Yakovenko, the company’s chief executive, said he sees Solana constantly evolving to meet users’ needs, in contrast to Vitalik Buterin’s vision for Ethereum as a largely self-sufficient system.

He believes that if the network stopped evolving, it would simply not survive. He noted on X: “Solana needs to never stop iterating. It shouldn’t depend on any single group or individual to do so, but if it ever stops changing to fit the needs of its devs and users, it will die.”

Buterin’s previous assertion that Ethereum must be able to stand on its own over the long term, without relying on continual input from its developers, was the premise for his post.

Yakovenko insists the blockchain needs to remain useful to both users and developers

In his post, Yakovenko said the Solana network needs to provide practical value or risk vanishing altogether. From his perspective, the chain needs to be valuable enough to users and profitable enough for developers to help push ongoing upgrades to the open-source protocol. He argued that for any protocol to survive, it must always be useful, and that upgrades should resolve specific problems with users or developers, not try to do everything.

He also insisted that there would always be another version of Solana, even if that version didn’t come from Anza, Solana Labs, or the foundation, and that future SIMD votes might provide the fuel for the GPUs that develop the code.

In contrast, Buterin had earlier shared that Ethereum would prioritize decentralization, privacy, and self-sovereignty, even if that limits broader adoption. On Friday, the network founder asserted, “In 2026, no longer. Every compromise of values that Ethereum has made up to this point – every moment where you might have been thinking, is it really worth diluting ourselves so much in the name of mainstream adoption – we are making that compromise no longer.”

However, he affirmed that there’s still much more Ethereum must accomplish before a hands-off approach is feasible. He pushed that the network must implement quantum resistance, improve scalability, and adopt a block-building design that resists centralization to stand the test of time.

Yakovenko’s supporters say failing to adapt could kill the network

So far, Buterin supporters have argued that adding more features would increase technical risk and create more room for centralization. Yet supporters of Yakovenko’s philosophy argue that not evolving fast enough could leave chains behind that move more quickly.

Nonetheless, some users, however, expressed skepticism about Yakovenko’s idea that future Solana releases may not necessarily come from Anza, Labs, or the foundation, if it means evolution. One X user pointed out that without one of the three leading the upgrade, progress would be painfully slow—essentially causing the network to ossify. He gave Bitcoin as an example, noting that it still implements changes, but they take years to navigate through the community’s internal politics.

Though some argued that the network must continue iterating and adapting, regardless, because a blockchain that stops adapting will eventually die.

Although they have pursued different development strategies, Ethereum and Solana continue to lead the layer-1 blockchain industry. Ethereum wins for decentralization and tokenized assets, while Solana is known for its high-speed network, consumer app popularity, and fee revenue.

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