One of the key factors that has attracted developers to Solana’s ecosystem is its low cost of utility for NFTs, which significantly contrasts with its gas-consuming competitor, Ethereum. However, despite being a slim blockchain platform, development still demands funding.
In light of this, Solana’s dominant NFT protocol Metaplex implemented a highly controversial network fee in their “Token Metadata immutability plan”, leading to strong negative reactions and calls for forks within the community. Soon after, Metaplex decided to amend their initial plans, retaining some fees, but exempting updates, verifications, freezes, and thaws to avoid obstructing emerging use cases.
In a recent Blockworks interview on the Empire podcast, co-hosts Garrett Harper and Santiago Santos explored the antagonism surrounding the fees and whether it could potentially drive developers back to Ethereum. Harper pointed out that Metaplex, a spin-off from Solana Labs, had secured $46 million in funding, making it Solana’s third-largest individual project. Consequently, many people expected Metaplex to operate as a public good.
However, with the addition of fees, dissatisfaction within the community led to discussions of forking the project, but Harper warned that this was not a feasible solution. Metaplex CEO Stephen Hess previously told Blockworks that forking the Metaplex program would be allowed so long as there is no intention to remove, replace, or modify the fees.
One of the main challenges Solana has when compared to Ethereum is the absence of established protocol standards such as ERC-20 and ERC-721. Santos asked if the newly-introduced fees might impede NFT development on Solana, diminishing interest in bringing users to the ecosystem. He added that while public goods need funding, imposing a tax on users could create barriers in the competitive landscape, particularly for novel NFT projects.
Santos observed that despite Ethereum’s slower mainnet development, layer-2 solutions provided low-cost, rapidly evolving alternatives that had not caused issues like those on Solana. These developments allow Ethereum to innovate without making changes at the main protocol level.
In conclusion, while Solana’s attempts to fund development through fees are justifiable, they could inadvertently drive developers to consider other ecosystems, like Ethereum, that have navigated similar challenges without creating friction among their users.
Source: Blockworks
