Solana Contentathon 2025

Developers, researchers, and enthusiasts continuously debate the trade-offs between networks in the rapidly evolving blockchain industry.

Solana vs. The World is an essay competition designed to foster deep technical analysis and rigorous comparisons between Solana and alternative blockchain networks.

We invite participants to explore how Solana compares to alternative chains regarding architecture, execution efficiency, scalability, and design trade-offs.

• How does Solana’s integrated, high-throughput, low-latency approach compare to Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap?

• How does it stack up against the app-chain model of Cosmos or the flexible subnet architecture of Avalanche?

• How does it fare against newer contenders pushing the boundaries of blockchain technology?

This competition is an opportunity to cut through the noise, challenge assumptions, and provide well-researched, data-driven insights into the strengths and weaknesses of different blockchain architectures.

Let the technical showdown begin!

Bounty scope 

A long-form research article, at least 2,000 words in length, posted on a blogging site (e.g., Medium, Substack, Notion, etc.) that is publicly viewable upon deadline.

We encourage writers to compare Solana with a single alternative blockchain of their choice. Comparisons should focus on live production networks only—no whitepapers or testnets.

Examples (alphabetical order) may include, but are not limited to:

• Aptos

• Arbitrum

• Avalanche

• Base

• BNB Chain

• Near

• Sei

• Sui

• XRP

Excluded blockchains (no live mainnet) include, but are not limited to:

• Atlas

• Fogo

• MegaETH

• Monad

Example Areas of Focus

Participants may wish to explore the following aspects in their essays:

• Architecture and design trade-offs

• Consensus mechanisms

• Scheduling and execution

• Block production and propagation

• State storage and management

Out of Scope

The competition is focused on technical comparisons. Articles should avoid:

• Token prices, market valuations, and trading metrics

• Community size or social media influence

• Personalities and founders

Reward structure

First prize is $5,000 and a chance to have your article published on the Helius blog.

Judging Criteria

1. Originality: novelty of ideas and insights

2. Accuracy: factual accuracy of the information and the relevance of the data used

3. Resources: inclusion of resources to support your claims

4. Writing Style: quality, conciseness, readability, and engagement level of your content

5. Rich Media & Presentation: use of data dashboards, original charts, etc.

Brownie points for tweeting about your submission and tagging @heliuslabs.

Content Criteria 

Your article will be rejected:

• If it is not written in English

• If the contents of your submission are less than 2,000 words

• If it is found to be plagiarized, stolen, or written by AI

• If it fails to include and cite proper references

• Your submission is not publicly viewable on and after the submission deadline. Submissions of private links will not be eligible.

Resources 

• Solana: How it works — Helius Blog

• The Solana Whitepaper — A.Yakovenko