Vocal Ethereum researcher Max Resnick jumps ship to join Solana

Max Resnick announced on X that he had left Consensys and taken his talents to Anza, a subsidiary of Solana Labs. Resnick said he started his first day and plans to transform Solana in the first 100 days by writing a spec for the protocol.

Resnick also plans to prioritize fee markets and consensus implementation where he believes he will have the highest impact. That’s because he maintains that Ethereum lacks the streamlined process for rapid change, which some see as an advantage of decentralization.

The researcher is confident he can get up to speed on implementation details as quickly as possible but hopes it will help others contribute to the Solana protocol in the future.

Resnick remains a research fellow on Consensys

Resnick revealed that he will continue to work with the Consensys team as an advisory researcher fellow while focusing on his new role. The researcher is confident that the Special Mechanical Group (SMG) team has top talent, and adding two major new hires has further augmented that capacity.

According to Resnick, 0x81B, Mallesh Pai, and the rest of the SMG team will continue to drive outsized impact internally within Consensys.

Ryan Berckmans, an Ethereum community member, expressed his excitement at seeing that Max had left the Ethereum extended core dev community. He admitted that critics like Max have frequently claimed that Ethereum needs to become more like Solana. Berckmans argued that Ethereum’s strategy of a maximally decentralized L1 scaled by a marketplace of L2s is apex, and no strategy changes are needed.

The Ethereum investor believes that Solana will try to copy things Ethereum already has, including client diversity, a real protocol spec, a research community, and much more on-chain capital.

“Max is now part of Sol’s effort to become more like Ethereum. That’s ironic considering he kept saying Ethereum had to become more like Solana”.

-Ryan Berckmans, Ethereum community member.

Nevertheless, Resnick admitted on Ethereum show Bankless on September 4 that the re-architecture needed to change Solana’s consensus rules would be out of his control when asked whether he would leave for Solana.

Anza is a Solana-based research and development firm developing the Agave client. Resnick argued that those in the Ethereum ecosystem are unfamiliar with them because the firm has been quietly shipping major improvements to the network over the past year. 

Crypto moguls approve Resnick’s move to Solana

Joe Lubin and Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founders of Ethereum and Solana, expect Resnick’s move to have a positive impact on the industry. The co-founders argued that it would “cross-pollinate” and accelerate the space for everyone.

Kaito AI data also shows that Resnick’s move could bring more attention to Solana’s technical roadmap as he boasts the 34th-largest mindshare on Crypto X.

Dankard Feist, an Ethereum Foundation researcher, applauded Resnick in a post on X for opening the Overton window to speak about stuff that isn’t perfect in Ethereum land. Feist also argued that in the long term, there’s a need to build a good product, which can’t happen without open criticism.

Resnick also revealed that many people on ETH with much bigger contributions than him are frustrated about Ethereum’s current state and are asking for change. He added that those people are uncertain how long they can work on Ethereum if changes don’t happen.

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