Aleph Zero vs Solana: why AZERO could out-compete SOL
Thread1,093 words
Bullish call$AZERO−99.0%since this piece, moved against the callHow it played out ↓Recaps Solana's design, centralization concerns and four outages, then argues Aleph Zero's DAG-based AlephBFT, rotating committees and planned privacy layer could make it a stronger high-throughput L1.
Key claims
Solana had four outages between Sep 2021 and Jun 2022
Nearly 50% of SOL's initial allocation went to insiders per Messari
Solana's fixes (stake-weighted txs, fee markets) push toward centralization and higher fees
0/ With $SOL battling a lot of FUD lately, let's have a look at @Aleph_Zero, another upcoming high-throughput L1 that might become a serious competitor to Solana 🚀
A 🧵 about $AZERO and why it might beat $SOL (0/38) 👇
@Aleph_Zero 1/ But before we dive into $AZERO, let's quickly recap what $SOL aims to achieve, how it does it & where it currently stands
@Aleph_Zero 2/ #Solana is built on Rust and the development environment is not EVM-compatible. On Solana, smart contracts are deployed on-chain in Rust C or C++
@Aleph_Zero 2/ $SOL's narrative very strongly evolves around being the fastest and cheapest blockchain around, which manifests in the blockchain's innovative design
@Aleph_Zero 3/ #Solana uses a Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) mechanism called Tower Consensus and leverages a novel Proof of History (PoH) concept as a global source of time before consensus is achieved in order to reduce latency
@Aleph_Zero 4/ Additionally, $SOL features a mempool-less transaction forwarding protocol called Gulfstream and a fast block propagation mechanism in the form of Turbine, which enable the network to reach a very high transaction throughput
@Aleph_Zero 5/ Interestingly, $SOL uses on-chain vote transactions for node communication in consensus (sending votes to consensus leader). While this allows consensus to take advantage of Solana's before-mentioned turbine block propagation protocol, it has led to issues in the past (see 9)
@Aleph_Zero 6/ But #Solana also poses high hardware to node runners, which while increasing the throughput capacity of the network, impairs network decentralization
@Aleph_Zero 7/ Network centralization is one of the core fears around #Solana, especially as data from #Messari shows that nearly 50% of $SOL initial token allocation went to insiders like venture capital firms, with only a fractional amount going to the public
@Aleph_Zero 8/ But more importantly, there has been a number of outages on the #Solana network, which have cast doubt on the resilience & security of the network. Lets have a look at what happened:
@Aleph_Zero 9/ Outage 1 - September 2021
Problem: Loss of consensus due to tx overload caused by NFT minting activity
Solution: Vote tx given preference over non-vote tx
Result: Did not rly fix the congestion issue (see tweet 11)
@Aleph_Zero 10/ Outage 2 - April 2022
Problem: Network congestion due to increased bot activity
Solution: Limit on # of tx by a particular address in a block was set
Result: Further centralization/censhorship of the network
@Aleph_Zero 11/ Outage 3 - May 2022
Problem: Loss of consensus due to tx overload caused by NFT minting activity
Solution: Stake-weighted transactions / Introduction fee market
Result: Leads to further network centralization, favouring well-capitalized nodes (high stake)
@Aleph_Zero 12/ Outage 4 - June 2022
Problem: Loss of consensus due to problem with durable nonce transactions
Solution: Disable durable nonce feature until fix applied
Result: Problem hopefully solved when re-activated
@Aleph_Zero 13/ Since the tx overload problems are inherent to #Solana's design, #Solana devs are basically left with two choices to address 1 & 3:
- Increase hardware reqs to support higher tx load
- Introduce mempool & use tx fees to indicate priority rather than a very low/fixed tx fee
@Aleph_Zero 14/ While the former would further impair network decentralization (already a key concern), the latter is likely to adversely affect $SOL's narrative as the cheapest blockchain, especially with competitors like $AZERO on the rise
@Aleph_Zero 15/ As outlined in tweet 11, #Solana has so far opted to introduce stake-weighted txs (practice of prioritizing certain types of traffic among nodes) & fee markets (priority fees, prioritizing time-sensitive txs & reducing the amount of invalid or duplicated messages)
@Aleph_Zero 16/ In any case, it seems likely that a tx fee increase is necessary in mid-long term anyhow because currently #Solana is losing money through inflationary $SOL rewards not made up for by revenues. If inflation drops, fees will be increasingly important to secure the network
@Aleph_Zero 17/ But now, let's finally dive into $AZERO. @Aleph_Zero also wants to be the fastest & cheapest chain. It's built on Substrate & implemented in Rust. It takes advantage of a heavily modified asynchronous PoS consensus (AlephBFT) in conjunction with Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs)
@Aleph_Zero 18/ The acronym “DAG” stands for Directed Acyclic Graph. The name tells you a lot already. A #DAG is a graph that has a direction and doesn’t have any cycles. As you can see, this looks quite different from a traditional blockchain with linearly connected transactions or blocks
@Aleph_Zero 19/ You can think of DAGs as pre-step in the process of creating a blockchain. While some of its blocks are already connected with an edge (and hence ordered), some are not. Additional effort is required to construct a final chain based on a DAG. #AlephBFT is optimized for this
@Aleph_Zero 20/ From a technical standpoint, using #DAGs allows for faster transaction speeds and higher throughput and hence significantly lower transaction fees
@Aleph_Zero 21/ Additionally, in DAG-based protocols heavy computing (like in PoW) is completely unnecessary, as new transactions are validated by the previous ones
@Aleph_Zero 22/ Leveraging a DAG-structure in an asynchronous consensus setting, makes $AZERO's AlephBFT similar to $AVAX and $FTM consensus mechanisms
@Aleph_Zero 23/ Rotating validator committees that rotate every 15 minutes from a set chosen for each 24-hour era, increase security and decentralization of consensus
@Aleph_Zero 24/ Additional security is guaranteed through the asynchronicity of #AlephBFT. This means that the network will work smoothly & retain data correctness even if parts of the network are down
@Aleph_Zero 25/ While $AZERO is likely to have rather high hardware requirements that exceed consumer hardware, @Aleph_Zero seems to have an edge over #Solana here
@Aleph_Zero 26/ Being Built on #Substrate, @Aleph_Zero implements a smart contract pallet supporting Rust and ink! programming languages. They are committed to creating fast, secure & Turing complete smart contracts (so like $SOL no EVM-support, but ink! support)
@Aleph_Zero 27/ Additionally, Liminal, #AlephZero’s original privacy framework (currently under development) is a privacy solution for smart contracts based on zero-knowledge proofs and Secure Multi-Party Computation concepts. Surely an edge over $SOL, that doesn't natively support privacy
@Aleph_Zero 28/ Being convinced that AlephBFT is more performant than the #Polkadot relay chain's BABE/GRANDPA consensus mechanism, has opted to be a standalone substrate chain with its own consensus, rather than plugging into Polkadot's shared security model
@Aleph_Zero 29/ But @Aleph_Zero might still decide to go for a dedicated parachain bridge. Such a design would allow $AZERO to become deeply rooted within the #substrate ecosystem, while still remaining a sovereign chain. This gives $AZERO and edge over $SOL with regards to interoperability
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How the call played out · since 18 Jun 2022
Prices as of 23 Oct 2026This piece takes a view on $AZERO, so that move is read against the call. Other assets it covers are shown as context, not as calls.
$AZEROAleph ZeroBullish thesis
After Solana's outages and centralization concerns, Aleph Zero's DAG-based AlephBFT and planned privacy layer could make it the stronger high-throughput L1.
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Since then
Zero has written 11 more pieces on Solana and $SOL since this one.
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