Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt

After weeks of jubilance over the Solana ecosystem’s resounding comeback—one that boosted SOL, Solana NFTs, Solana meme coins, and even the lackluster Solana smartphone—the momentum began to cool this week, triggering intensified exchanges between advocates of the blockchain and those of its dominant rival, Ethereum. 

On Thursday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin bemoaned the dying Web3 vision that originally spurred much crypto development, blaming stalled progress on the exorbitant cost of gas fees. 

https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1740515567621345689 

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko was quick to add his voice to the discourse, dismissing Ethereum as a “cockroach settlement layer.”

https://twitter.com/3orovik/status/1740809173921591525 

The tension was likely heightened by the declining fortunes of key Solana winners of recent weeks, most notably the once-unstoppable dog-themed meme coin BONK. 

https://twitter.com/CryptoGodJohn/status/1740482766075310106 

And just in time, native tokens of Ethereum layer-2 networks such as Optimism and Arbitrum shot up over 30% and 16%, respectively—likely due to those blockchain’s lower gas fees.

https://twitter.com/ASAgemsALGO/status/1738344863429480591

Soon, animosity between ascendant Ethereum maximalists and defensive Solana advocates came to define almost every corner of Twitter discourse. 

https://twitter.com/SwopLabs/status/1740387311593103604 

Even seemingly unrelated news events got sucked into the fray. When news broke earlier in the week that Donald Trump had started offloading millions of dollars worth of ETH from his struggling NFT projects, Twitter users were quick to view the news as some sort of referendum on the never-ending Ethereum/Solana fracas. 

https://twitter.com/Priestmaux/status/1740468091044196680 

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.