Solana
Ranked 4 of 5 cryptocurrencies by recommenders
Recommended for high throughput, a large user base and a capable chain to build on. Critics most often say it trades decentralization for speed.
Recommended for high throughput, a large user base and a capable chain to build on. Critics most often say it trades decentralization for speed.
15 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 8
- approval share
- 47%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Good chain to build on
“you have to admit that Solana is a good chain to build on”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Kacet – a freelancer marketplace with crypto-native payments” “a well designed network like Ethereum or Solana”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Hackers have withdrawn ~4k BTC (~$320M) from the Liquid Federation wallet” High throughput and performance
“its performance and economic model are sufficient to pay for your local café”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “I wasted years of my life in crypto” “You can see yourself that Solana does 130-140M/day consistently.”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Gov.uk goes Dutch on payments as it dumps Stripe” “it shows the capability is there”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Gov.uk goes Dutch on payments as it dumps Stripe” Large user base and volume
“Solana is great because fees are so low, the wallet apps are great, there's loads of stable coins and there's a big pool of users.”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Kacet – a freelancer marketplace with crypto-native payments” “You can see yourself that Solana does 130-140M/day consistently.”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Gov.uk goes Dutch on payments as it dumps Stripe”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Centralized validator set
“Existing blockchain architectures simply cannot solve the trilemma – that includes Solana, Hyperledger, etc. They all essentially sacrifice decentralization.”
Comment from 31 Aug 2026 in “We tackled the blockchain trilemma with multi‑bucket parallelism (niumeta)” “Solana has a highly centralized validator set that will keep shrinking over time as the cost to run one out paces the rise in the SOL price.”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Kacet – a freelancer marketplace with crypto-native payments” Sacrifices decentralization for throughput
“Existing blockchain architectures simply cannot solve the trilemma – that includes Solana, Hyperledger, etc. They all essentially sacrifice decentralization.”
Comment from 31 Aug 2026 in “We tackled the blockchain trilemma with multi‑bucket parallelism (niumeta)” “Solana is junk - it abandons proper consensus mechanism in favor of throughput.”
Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “Crypto got everything it wanted. Now it's sinking” Questioned design and sequencing choices
“Some joker who built Solana actually thought Berkeley Packet Filter language would be better than WASM for their runtime”
Comment from 9 Jan 2026 in “What Happened to WebAssembly” “SOL has issues with sequencing”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “Production engineering when trading billions of dollars a day [video]”
Other cryptocurrencies people recommend
The four most recommended other cryptocurrencies, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monero (XMR) | 102 | 41 | 71% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Ethereum | 28 | 22 | 56% | 12 | — | — |
| Zcash | 10 | 14 | 42% | 7 | — | — |
| SolanaThis page | 7 | 8 | 47% | 8 | — | — |
| Base | 5 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
15 of the 18 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“a well designed network like Ethereum or Solana”
“Existing blockchain architectures simply cannot solve the trilemma – that includes Solana, Hyperledger, etc. They all essentially sacrifice decentralization.”
“Solana helping a Trump coin scam on Trump's first day.”
“You can see yourself that Solana does 130-140M/day consistently.”
“it shows the capability is there”
“SOL has issues with sequencing”
“The highly optimized "fast chains" (Solana & co) are in a lot of trouble too.”
“anything involving Solana's account model”
“better faster stronger than both ethereum and solana”
“you have to admit that Solana is a good chain to build on”
“Solana has a highly centralized validator set that will keep shrinking over time as the cost to run one out paces the rise in the SOL price.”
“Solana is great because fees are so low, the wallet apps are great, there's loads of stable coins and there's a big pool of users.”
“Some joker who built Solana actually thought Berkeley Packet Filter language would be better than WASM for their runtime”
“its performance and economic model are sufficient to pay for your local café”
“Solana is junk - it abandons proper consensus mechanism in favor of throughput.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.