Vocal Ethereum researcher Max Resnick jumps ship to join Solana

Blockchain researcher Max Resnick has just jumped ship from Ethereum infrastructure firm Consensys to Solana research and development firm Anza after increasingly opposing key aspects of Ethereum’s roadmap in recent months.

“I’m taking my talents to Solana,” Resnick said in a Dec. 9 X post after revealing he started his first day at Anza on Dec. 9.

Resnick, who worked as head of research at Consensys subsidiary Special Mechanisms Group since February 2023, was critical of Ethereum’s scaling strategy.

For the first 100 days at Anza, Resnick said he will spend his time writing out a technical specification focused on Solana’s fee markets and consensus implementations — two areas where he believes he can have the “highest impact.”

Anza is the software firm behind Solana’s Agave client — aimed at improving the network’s resilience and uptime, among other things.

Ethereum community member Ryan Berckmans was happy to see Resnick leave for Solana as he recently criticized Ethereum’s layer 2 scaling approach, arguing it should instead primarily focus its scaling efforts at the base layer like Solana.

“Critics like Max have frequently claimed that Ethereum needs to become more like Solana,” Berckmans said in a Dec. 9 X post.

But Resnick will now work to improve client diversity and build a more robust research community like Ethereum, Berckmans pointed out:

“That’s ironic considering he kept saying Ethereum had to become more like Solana.”

Speaking on Ethereum show Bankless on Sept. 4, Resnick said the amount of “re-architecture” needed to change Solana’s consensus rules would mostly be out of his “control” when asked whether he would ever leave for Solana.

Consensus refers to the method by which nodes validate transactions and reach an agreement on the correct state of the blockchain.

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Others, such as the co-founders of Ethereum and Solana, Joe Lubin and Anatoly Yakovenko, viewed Resnick’s move more positively for the industry, arguing it would “cross pollinate” and accelerate the space for everyone.

Resnick will continue working with Consensys in an advisory capacity as a research fellow.

He said Special Mechanism Group and two of its new hires, including Mallesh Pai, “will continue to drive outsized impact internally within Consensys, in the Ethereum community, and in blockchain research and development more broadly.”

Resnick’s move could bring even more attention to Solana’s technical roadmap as he boasts the 34th largest mindshare on Crypto X, over the last 30 days, Kaito AI data shows.

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