Ethereum Researcher Max Resnick Moves to Solana

Ethereum developer Max Resnick has announced his departure from the ConsenSys team to join Anza, a company focused on Solana.

Last week was my last week at Consensys. Today is my first day at @anza_xyz.

I’m taking my talents to Solana.

In my first 100 days, I plan on writing a spec for as much of the Solana protocol as I can get to, prioritizing fee markets and consensus implementations where I…

— Max Resnick (@MaxResnick1) December 9, 2024

“Last week was my final week at ConsenSys. Today is my first day at Anza. I’m taking my talents to Solana,” he stated.

Resnick’s decision followed significant layoffs at ConsenSys and a period of personal disillusionment with Ethereum’s development direction.

“I’m tired of Ethereum losing to Solana. I want us to start winning again. But that means we need to start playing our game, not theirs,” he wrote.

In late November, the researcher criticized the project’s roadmap:

“A roadmap should be goal-oriented, not solution-oriented. Ethereum’s roadmap focuses on solutions, not problems.”

In his article Ethereum Needs to Dream Bigger (“Ethereum Needs to Dream Bigger”), Resnick noted that the original vision of the network as “a public financial substrate for a new world” had been “ground to dust.”

“Ethereum is tired and burned out,” wrote the researcher.

He also stated that making decisions five years in advance is counterproductive. Given the pace of technological development, this is too long a timeframe.

The researcher urged Ethereum developers to return to the original development direction and outlined five main goals for the network:

• block processing in one second;
• finalization in one slot;
• throughput of over 1000 transactions per second;
• simultaneous addition of multiple blocks.

Three weeks after publishing this article, Resnick announced his shift to the Solana ecosystem and his new role at Anza. There, he hopes to achieve what he could not in Ethereum.

“In the first 100 days, I plan to write specifications for as much of the Solana protocol as I can. Priority will be given to fee markets and consensus implementations where I can bring the most value,” he noted.

Anza is a research firm within the Solana ecosystem, developing the Agave client. According to Resnick, they have been “quietly releasing critical updates for the network over the past year.”

Another well-known Ethereum researcher and developer, Justin Drake, did not share Resnick’s enthusiasm for Solana.

“Solana doesn’t care about health. The only thing they care about is performance. They think about reducing latency and increasing throughput,” noted Drake.

He believes that the “Ethereum killer” is experiencing its “golden age,” but this will soon end.

“Competitive advantages in speed and throughput may be lost due to architectural constraints that hinder further scaling,” stated the developer.

In Drake’s view, prioritizing processing speed and throughput should be the focus of L2 solutions, while the main blockchain’s primary task is to ensure security.

On December 1, Justin Drake assessed Ethereum’s achievements following the implementation of the Beacon Chain update.