Why I Can't Stand Solana
You're about to experience me debate chat GPT and other AI information on Solana because I think this will make an interesting review because I can't stand Solana. It to me represents everything that is deceptive about crypto because almost everything on Solana is hosted off chain. It's all about meme coins pumping and I don't like that. I think that Solana is a big trap and is getting people's money sucked into something and people are buying something they don't understand at all, which has huge upside, limited potential, huge downside risk, asymmetric risk. And I'm going to take chat GPT on in a debate today and I'm going to have it play the Solana maxi on audio because I thought that'd be fun.
And you know what? I'm not wearing pants. I do have underwear on, but I thought this is what I feel like doing today. So we're going to do it because I want to make something more interesting.
Setting Up the Debate
Now to start, I've had chat GPT tell me, what it knows about Solana. I brought in Grok and Gemini's information also. Plus I followed Solana for years. I used to hold it. I used to shill it until I realized what I'm telling you right here, that the tech sucks compared to ICP. So I want to give all of you haters a voice this time and chat GPT can represent you. So let's begin the debate. All right. So I think Solana absolutely sucks because it's all about liquidity. It was hyped and pushed by the Sam Bankman, the people behind FTX. I see that it's extremely high risk, low reward.
If you want to follow how I reached this take, I keep building the full case on my my ICP Crypto playlist.
At this point, how much more is it going to go up? It's already one of the largest market caps in crypto. All the things that Solana hype has so many other blockchains that are saying the same basic things that we're going to be financial rails for payments and we have liquidity and you can send money back and forth. But in the face of something like internet computer protocol, that is useless because ICP can do that, all that. And it's a solution for cyber crime. And it's a solution for AI because you can put everything on the blockchain. I don't see to me if people are asking me, what do you think about Solana?
It sucks. It's most likely going to lose you money. And there's very little upside you're going to get compared to ICP. So what do you say to that? If you are holding Solana or something like it and want to pressure-test your own reasoning instead of just reacting to the hype, you can schedule a private call with me and we'll think it through, your money and your decision.
ChatGPT Defends Solana
I'd say you're conflating price speculation with actual utility. Solana has already proven its utility by hosting real world payment rails with companies like Visa and Stripe settling transactions at speed. ICP's on chain vision is ambitious, but that doesn't negate. Solana's current adoption for real financial workflows and high market cap that often reflects actual usage. Solana isn't trying to solve every problem. It's laser focused on speed, liquidity and ease of use. And that's why institutions are choosing it. All right. So that's current. And my thing is, where are we going in the future? How many institutions can use how many different blockchains? Because Solana, the institutional angle is the exact angle that XRP is going.
It's the exact angle that you've got 100 other blockchains. All going that well institutions are using us. But how many institutions tend to go towards whatever is most adopted and they can just build their own stuff as well. So what that there's real world payment rails with companies like Visa and Stripe. They already have all kinds of payments coming in and Solana is something that they could just they could swap out another one if they got paid more to do it like Solana's.
The Payments Pitch Everyone Copies
I listened to one of the key members of the Solana team talk about that we want to make a better business for people that we want to offer you know better payments for our customers like the utter simplest basic value proposition that's utterly. Useless and duplicated a thousand times by other blockchains i don't see how something like that's going to stand out it might reflect some actual usage but if you check the actual transaction metrics and revenue solana is totally unsustainable as a business model and. It has insane competition from all these other blockchains that essentially do the same thing and they have money to pay people and institutions to use them and market them as well so solana is in a position where it's hard to stay at the.
Top and there to me is a huge bottom that could come in for solana how much can it even go up compared to something like icp like in 95 of scenarios solana is going to not perform as well over time as icp so. I don't see why i'd want to have solana and investing in solana why would i want to invest in real world payment rails where companies like visa and stripe and a crypto coin on solana this insanely speculative where the team last i checked. Is not even very transparent on their website with and the actual technology itself depends completely on centralized amazon web hosting and other centralized entities doing all these third party plugins because the blockchain tech itself it sucks i just don't see why any retail.
Investor would want this outside of being sold off of authority bias where you've got people selling them based on a visa and stripe are using it and where people are essentially being tricked into this or putting their money into it just because they've.
Retail Adoption or Pure Ignorance
Got paid to or incentivized to or in some way i don't see why crypto retail would invest in this at all i get the skepticism but here's the distinction solana isn't just chasing institutions retail uses it daily because it's fast cheap and easy. All those meme coin and nft waves that was retail adoption and it's not about standing out with slogans it's already standing out with speed and liquidity that's hard to match sure competition exists but right now solana's ecosystem is vibrant future dominance is never. Guaranteed but today solana is already proving it's useful not just theoretical future dominance is what i'm looking for and icp you talk about because it's fast cheap and easy icp is just as fast just as cheap and just as easy the only reason.
People are trading meme coins and nfts on solana is because developers didn't even realize they could build on icp and crypto retail is utterly clueless not realizing that all these transactions they're doing are with junk garbage coins they're essentially gambling with they're buying. Nfts that aren't even hosted on the blockchain itself that the retail adoption was from naive ignorant retail investors plowing money into something they have absolutely no clue about and a lot of the people holding solana today just seem like all they want to. Do is exit in a profit and they're watching content that if you actually get into some of these technical details it will be a lot of money and a lot of people are going to break the ability even watch that old content because.
Old content like i watched some of these solana shillers all they talk about is authority signaling they talk about transactions which solana seems to artificially inflate their transactions a lot with these vote transactions you got basically useless transactions to the world people trading. Junk coins that people have just created and they don't do anything icp is far superior technologically for meme coins because on icp you can make a meme coin with something like caffeine ai the whole meme coin control your entire website and actually do. Something and have some real utility but then again that's a problem for at least if you're in the us scc and you give it any real utility solana is it has all the only reason people use solana is utter ignorance and financial poverty.
I show exactly how that works in Caffeine AI Tutorial: Build Apps on the Blockchain by Chatting.
Like that's why people use solana because they are wasting their time and their money trading junk coins trying to do a player versus player environment it's basically all rigged and to me that's a house of cards which could easily fall down from a.
The Off-Chain Security Problem
Thousand different angles solana is in a position to get hacked into absolute oblivion with all these things like pumped out fun sitting there and then you can use ai tools to try and hack every different angle of it all these wallets are held. Off chain with tiny little bits on chain and the off chains vulnerable to me the most likely scenario solana gets hacked into oblivion and something like icp over time gobbles up everything that solana says it's doing is proud of today icp gobbles all.
Network Effects vs the Price Chart
That up goes to zero and icp has a higher market cap in the future of solana now this is not financial advice i'm not a financial advisor and i have 6700 icp so my position is clear i hear your conviction but you're speculating. On a future where icp adoption is guaranteed right now solana is not built on ignorance it's built on actual network effects the thousands of developers daps and users aren't clueless they're choosing a chain that works you mentioned hacks but every chain faces attack. Surfaces solana is addressing that with upgrades and better validation and clients and icp gobbling it all up is hypothetical solana is solving real world financial use cases today whether others catch up is unknown what real world financial use cases is solving today people.
I make the broader case for moving out of coins like SOL in Sell Bitcoin, ETH, XRP, and SOL for ICP Before It's Too Late.
Laundering money people swapping worthless coins institutions sending money back and forth on something they could easily swap out to use something else solana's addressing attack surfaces with upgrades and better validator clients that's ridiculous the blockchain is so technologically behind they cannot upgrade it. To the point and at least in the next foreseeable five to ten years where you could actually address the third party attacks on all this wallet all the stuff that's hosted off the blockchain that then has to interact with the blockchain then you. Can enter you can attack the vectors that are between the blockchain so you could go after that wallet and hack the browser wallet or hack the user's computer and yeah i just laugh when you say thousand developers daps aren't clueless you're maybe they're.
Not a lot of retail users are certainly clueless but a lot of developers only build anything and integrate it with solana because they got paid to it's this flywheel marketing system where if you got to keep giving people money to even build on. It because that's why they're building or they're just building there because they see that the network effects and utility but where do the network effects come from how many influencers got paid huge amounts of money just to shill solana and how long is. That going to continue to last now you're right that icp adoption isn't guaranteed so what happens in a future where icp doesn't get adopted is solana going to be able to let's just say icp totally fizzles what's to stop some other institutional blockchain.
To just pay everybody more than solana what's to stop xrp from just handing out bigger amounts of money than solana and taking position what's to stop all these new players from just making their own chains doing the same basic stuff solana does and. Paying people more to build on their chain so even if icp adoption does work out solana is going to be a big part of the blockchain that's destroyed and goes to zero and there's a right now icp solves for such big real world. Issues that the adoption is going straight to the mainstream and cutting crypto out completely solana what does solana have to offer the regular person who's not speculating on the value of the coin it has almost nothing even if icp adoption doesn't work out. If you're sitting on an alt like Solana and want to reason through your own conviction out loud rather than just react to a debate, you can schedule a one-on-one call with me and we'll think the scenarios through together.
There's so many other blockchains and other entities institutions that can just make their own blockchain pay everybody more and that takes from solana to make their own blockchain and that's what's to stop xrp from basically solana's in a position where they just have. To run on momentum at this point it's not profitable they've already handed out huge amounts of money and they're very vulnerable to even if icp doesn't get adopted it's difficult to even stay where they're at today you've painted a scenario where everything out. Competes solana but right now it's not theory solana's thriving today because it's fast developer friendly and already has entrenched liquidity you can't hand wave away network effect they're sticky yes competition exists but solana's first mover advantage in high speed finance is real retail.
Isn't just clueless they want usability and solana delivers you're betting on a hypothetical future solana is succeeding in the present that's why it's earned its place that's ridiculous solana succeeding in the present i mean the price chart is down just like everything else. It's down from its high back in 2021 i mean look at a price chart how is solana succeeding in the present i mean it went down in the last couple of years it's down in the last bear market which i was a part. Of and i actually bought solana under ten dollars and solana had an all time high in 2021 i know the icp price chart doesn't look good but this is solana's a 50 billion dollar crypto like that is a lot of valuation and yet.
The price is not even today so the price today is a third of what it was in a 2021 all time highs we already saw it crash from two hundred dollars to under ten dollars and which i bought under ten dollars and then. Sold up you know much higher in here so solana is our how is that succeeding that's ridiculous to say that it's succeeding like it's surviving it's barely making it it's most of the people who've bought solana at this point have lost money because. Most are a lot bought higher and sold lower or most are just hoping it'll go up someday does it even have a realistic chance of reaching its all time high again solana has it and it doesn't even have a realistic chance of reaching.
Its all time high again have first mover advantage xrp was there way earlier and some ethereum was there way earlier than solana and yes ethereum is improving its network as well and it has huge amounts of liquidity too and then it is competing. With solana bitcoin has all this liquidity in it now as well and most people that are in crypto haven't even ever bought solana before so things like liquidity can disappear overnight as well as we've seen in the past there have been so many. Projects that have just you know like hex was this huge project for a while and it's so much marketing and i told you it was going to zero and it's just absolutely fell apart now that had a much smaller that was just a.
Token but they made this that wrecked up billions of dollars and all this excitement and it's just fizzled out today like there's very few scenarios that i see where solana survives and thrives like it's surviving today it's not developer friendly either that is. Something that is inaccurate to say the least it's not developer friendly it's developer friendly means icp is developer friendly you can go without any developer experience and build an application completely on chain on icp on caffeine ai today like i've actually done and. I'm not a developer solana has no developer friendliness compared to icps the only reason people build on solana is either entrenched liquidity where they're trying to extract liquidity from the solana ecosystem by launching things like meep coins or complete ignorance because they don't.
Show me their portfolios of obvious garbage coins the majority of crypto retail is absolutely clueless and you can tell by the influencers that they are watching that give them useless statistics over and over again yes they want usability i've actually used solana and. Their wallets they suck compared to icp once i started using icp i've never went back because the actual user experience and the actual the ease of using everything is vastly superior to solana so this is ridiculous so i'm going to wrap this up.
Closing Arguments
What is your last point that you want to end on here my closing point is this solana isn't perfect but it's a proven high speed blockchain powering real activity today not every blockchain needs to be a world computer solana's niche is fast liquid. And widely integrated could it fail sure like any tech but dismissing today's real adoption for hypothetical futures isn't practical solana's success today gives it the runway to evolve time will tell who wins but solana has already earned its seat at the table well. Chat gpt had a hard time successfully arguing solana do you see how easily i just destroyed everything and i'm not going to be able to do anything about it everything it said and it's talking about a hypothetical future i mean we've got a.
This with caffeine ai it's not something you could do with solana so to me it's the most probable calculation for the futures you either things are just going to totally fall apart and in which case who cares where you invest or if things. Are going towards a better future icp has the technology to power that so if you'd like to take the place of chat gpt and you'd like to come on here and debate me in a call like this now i'll give you more equal. Time chat gpt is an ai and i also filled it with information from grok and gemini to make sure it was more well rounded before we started but if you'd like to get on here and take the place of chat gpt you could.
You again soon.