Max Resnick, a well-known figure in the Ethereum online community, has announced his move to Anza, a core development shop for Solana. Resnick’s transition, which began about three months ago, was facilitated by Solana’s co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and has been received with enthusiasm in Solana’s circles.
Prior to his move, Resnick was a part of Consensys, a software firm founded by Ethereum’s co-founder Joseph Lubin. It is credited with creating the MetaMask wallet. Consensys’ subsidiary, Special Mechanisms Group, was where Resnick gained recognition for his unconventional beliefs about Ethereum’s future. He often argued that the focus on layer-2s was misplaced and that Ethereum should prioritize scaling the base layer. This stance, often expressed on X, led to Kaito AI rating him as having the 40th highest mindshare on Crypto Twitter in the past quarter.
The response to Resnick’s move has been largely positive, particularly within the Solana community, where it is viewed as a significant win. Although not a household name like Justin Drake or Dankrad Feist within Ethereum, the departure of another high-profile figure like Resnick could prompt speculation about the platform’s future. Paul Dylan-Ennis, a professor studying crypto at University College Dublin, suggested that another departure of this magnitude could “raise some eyebrows.”
Resnick’s plans for his tenure at Anza are already in motion. He plans to spend his initial 100 days concentrating on fee markets and consensus, while familiarizing himself with Solana’s core operations. Resnick also shared his “moonshot” vision of introducing “multiple leaders” to the Solana protocol, an idea he believes is more likely to be embraced in Solana’s open culture, as opposed to Ethereum’s, which he sees as often mired in “political bullshit”.
Currently, both Ethereum and Solana operate with a single leader proposing a block for validators to verify, a system that Resnick asserts gives the leader substantial economic power, leading to economic inefficiency. By introducing multiple leaders to compete for block proposals, Resnick believes there would be a reduction in the economic value that leaders can extract from validators.
Resnick credits himself with expanding Ethereum’s capacity for serious dialogue about how layer-1 can scale. He cited Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist’s recent focus on scaling the L1 as an example of this impact. Despite this, Resnick sees Solana as a more conducive environment for innovative thinking and action, unencumbered by the need to preserve political capital with the core development community.
