Introduction
Syscoin is a cryptocurrency that has been constantly on the buzz lately and is becoming even more popular. Moreover, many users believe that the coin can become the second Ethereum. However, not so long ago, such talk was also about another cryptocurrency called Solana. Both coins have a lot in common, such as high performance and speed, low fees, and smart contracts, but the projects are significantly different in their architecture. Thus, in this article, we will shed light on both cryptos and try to understand which one will take the first place.
However, before starting the Syscoin VS Solana battle, we would like to draw your attention to the history of each project and its distinctive features.
A Brief History of Solana Crypto
Solana is a monolithic Layer 1 blockchain that allows developers to create efficient, fast and cost-effective decentralized applications. The project was launched back in 2017 and is currently based in San Francisco. This blockchain is defined as “a public operating system in which anyone can participate.”
How Many Developers Are on Solana?
The founders of Solana are Eric Williams, OC BREW developer Greg Fitzgerald, and former Qualcomm and Dropbox developer Anatoly Yakovenko. “In 2017, Yakovenko started working on a project which would later materialize as Solana. He teamed up with his Qualcomm colleague Greg Fitzgerald, and they founded a project called Solana Labs. Attracting several more former Qualcomm colleagues in the process, the Solana protocol and SOL token were released to the public in 2020.” - CoinMarketCap.
Subsequent Events
Another important date for Solana was the Dutch auction on March 23, 2020. The feature of this sale was that its participants could return up to 90% of the invested funds. In March 2020, the project was released.
In June of the same year, the Solana Foundation was created, whose tasks were to conduct research (including with the involvement of third-party teams), as well as educational activities. For this, Solana Labs allocated 167 million SOL coins to the organization. Since many blockchain companies were interested in this project, in July 2020 the FTX crypto derivatives exchange launched the Serum decentralized exchange on the Solana blockchain. In October 2020, Solana developers created a cross-chain bridge with Ethereum, which allows you to transfer assets between two blockchains. You can read the Solana TPS history here.
Now, Solana is one of the fastest-growing projects in the blockchain industry. Moreover, this crypto accommodates many different decentralized applications (dApps). However, how many dApps are now on Solana? More than several hundred dApps are supported here, including decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and much more. You can read more about Solana on this blog.
A Brief History of Syscoin Crypto. What Is
We will start the story of this project with the most frequently asked question - is Syscoin monolithic or modular? Syscoin is a security-focused Layer 2 blockchain with a modular design that provides finality and data availability. You can get more information about this here.
The main goal of creating Syscoin was to support smart contracts within Metaverse, IoT, Smart Cities, and future interplanetary economies. "Syscoin's roadmap includes implementation of ZK-Rollups, Optimistic Rollups, Validium, and DAOSYS which is a new kind of DAO that aims to provide governance-free treasury management and self-sovereignty for all participants." - Coin Market Cap.
Who Developed Syscoin?
The Syscoin project was developed by Sebastian Schepis and launched in 2014. The following year the coin underwent several major updates, a pre-release state, and at least two hard forks. By 2022, it has gone through many difficulties and modifications. Initially, the project was intended to become a decentralized marketplace capable of eliminating intermediaries, reducing fees, and speeding up payments. However, shortly after the end of the ICO, most of the collected funds were stolen by a hired escrow agent Moolah.
Subsequent Events
Despite the sad fate of Sys coin, the developers continued to work on it. In the spring of 2015, the creators of the project joined SuperNet (a large-scale electronic cash network that brings together the most innovative solutions in the field of decentralization). In March 2016, the project joined Microsoft Azure (a cloud service from Microsoft), which allows you to create, run and store various applications on the servers of your data centers.
In April 2016, Syscoin version 2.0 was launched, and in the same summer, the Blockchain Foundry was launched, soon releasing the Blockmaster — an e-commerce platform on the blockchain.
In 2018, after several improvements, Syscoin 3.0 was released. And in 2021, the project team updated the roadmap providing a vision of Syscoin 4.0 — potentially the fastest, safest, and most decentralized blockchain.
What Makes Solana Unique
This blockchain is one of the fastest thanks to its unique, innovative infrastructure. Since the project processes block every 400 milliseconds, this means that Solana can complete transactions in a matter of seconds. The Solana blockchain can support more than 65 thousand transactions per second (TPS), with the ability to increase this speed as the network grows. In addition, the Solana Foundation and the development team strive to provide the lowest possible cost to end-users (the average price of one transaction on the Solana blockchain is $0.00025). Solana also offers tools to help developers get their projects off the ground as well as integrate dApps existing on other blockchains into the Solana blockchain.
Another unique feature of the Solana blockchain is that it operates on an eco-friendly Proof-of-History (PoH) consensus algorithm. Each transaction or piece of data receives a unique timestamp that displays the state, index, and data using cryptographically protected hashes.
Although PoH is crucial to the consensus model, it is not the primary consensus protocol, so Solana also uses a practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT) mechanism called “Tower BFT.” In Solana, stakeholders can delegate their tokens to validators so that they process transactions and protect the network, which makes the blockchain entirely secure and decentralized.
Now, developers have implemented eight key technologies to make the Solana blockchain fast, cost-effective, and secure. Below we present a few of them:
- Turbine - a protocol for block propagation, which allows validator nodes to work faster with less electricity consumption.
- Gulfstream - a protocol that helps validators process transactions faster and without delays.
- Seavel is a smart contract protocol that allows parallel processing and improves performance.
However, recently many experts predict the success of modular blockchains, which is why Solana’s monolithic architecture is often criticized. Moreover, the failures of the project also do not benefit its reputation and cast doubt on the stability of Solana. Also, since about 50% of SOL is owned by venture capitalists, the project is centralized and criticized by the crypto community.
What Makes Syscoin Unique and Special?
The Syscoin project has been attracting the attention of the crypto world since 2014. Even then, many were looking for high-quality Syscoin reviews and wondered what Syscoin is, how to mine Syscoin, and what is Syscoin price. As you know, Syscoin is a blockchain with a modular architecture that has absorbed all the best from the two giants, Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Syscoin blockchain is divided into two layers: the first layer is the main Proof-of-Work Syscoin blockchain, which is merge-mined with Bitcoin. It is worth noting here that although the community criticizes Bitcoin for its high electricity consumption and harm to the environment, its blockchain has a top level of security. So, Syscoin has about 20% of the hash power consumed by Bitcoin. Users who mine blocks in Bitcoin can also simultaneously mine SYS coins without additional costs. Also, Syscoin uses a Chainlock technology developed by Dash, reducing network hijacking risk. Since there are more than 2500 master nodes in Syscoin, the network is incredibly decentralized, unlike Solana.
The second Syscoin layer is the smart contract layer. Syscoin developers have created a Network Enhanced Virtual Machine (NEVM) that is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and allows you to create high-performance, secure, and fast smart contracts with minimum costs. In addition, the developers are implementing ZK-rollups technology, which combines hundreds of transactions into one and generates a zero-knowledge cryptographic proof and will allow the Syscoin blockchain to process more than 210 thousand TPS. Next, a tangle of transactions is sent to validators for verification, after which the smart contract verifies the transactions, and they are added to the block. Thus, thanks to the modular architecture, the project team achieved a high level of decentralization and scalability without sacrificing security.
It is important to mention that Syscoin developers allow the creation of crypto projects that comply with regulatory norms. This does not seem like a clear advantage, but it is important to remember that every year the governments of different countries try to control as many companies using cryptocurrency as possible. That is why creating regulatory-compliant projects will save you unnecessary problems in the future.
Where to Buy
If you don't know where and how to buy Syscoin and Solana, then the best solution is to use credible exchanges. For example, consider SimpleSwap - a reputable exchange that has the best rates on the market, and you can always check that. That's the lace you can buy your SYS or SOL or any other token.
As for storing your assets, we offer to give a try to a SimpleHold wallet that is famous for being secure and simple to use.
So, What's the Conclusion?
As of April 2023, Solana is significantly ahead of Syscoin in terms of popularity and market capitalization. Even though the project was launched only in 2017, in five years it has already become home to many well-known DeFi applications (such as Serum, Raydium, Solanart, etc). In addition, Solana offers a wide range of services and a dedicated community. However, it is impossible not to pay attention that it is impossible to cram all innovative technologies into one blockchain (without dealing with sharded chains and Layer 2 scaling solutions), as the project developers do. This is what led to the fact that periodically Solana faced congestion and failures.
Syscoin, on the contrary, is only gaining momentum, so the project will most likely have to go through a rather thorny path. The main goal of Syscoin developers is to transfer their decentralized applications from Ethereum to the Syscoin blockchain. We believe that Syscoin, with its modular architecture and ZK-rollups technology, has a great future as it will be able to achieve unprecedented speed while remaining cost-effective and secure. Moreover, as already mentioned, Syscoin allows you to create tokens that meet regulatory requirements, which will undoubtedly attract the attention of developers. Thus, if the project continues to realize its goals, Syscoin is likely to achieve great success.
Disclaimer: Notum does not provide any investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. This article is written for informational purposes only. Cryptocurrency is subject to market risk. Please do your own research and trade with caution.