Solana excels at providing a unified, high-performance environment with a single operational surface. Its monolithic architecture—integrating execution, settlement, and data availability—delivers a consistent 2,000-5,000 TPS with sub-$0.001 transaction fees, as seen in protocols like Jupiter and Raydium. Your oncall team monitors one network state, one set of RPC providers, and one consensus layer, simplifying incident response and performance tuning.
LABS
Comparisons
Solana vs Rollup-Based Stack: Oncall Ops
A technical analysis for engineering leaders comparing the operational burden, infrastructure management, and oncall responsibilities of running on Solana's monolithic chain versus a rollup-based modular stack.
Chainscore © 2026
introduction
THE ANALYSIS
Introduction: The Oncall Burden of Blockchain Choice
Choosing a blockchain foundation is a critical operational decision that determines your team's oncall burden, scalability ceiling, and long-term vendor risk.
Rollup-based stacks (e.g., Arbitrum Orbit, OP Stack, zkSync Hyperchains) take a modular approach by decoupling execution from Ethereum's settlement and data availability. This offers unparalleled customization and inherits Ethereum's security, but introduces a multi-vendor operational model. You now manage your rollup's sequencer health, bridge security, and data availability costs from providers like EigenDA or Celestia, adding complexity to your oncall playbook.
The key trade-off: If your priority is operational simplicity and raw throughput for a high-frequency application, choose Solana. Your team gets a single, battle-tested system to master. If you prioritize maximum security customization, Ethereum ecosystem alignment, or need a bespoke chain for a specific community, choose a Rollup stack. Be prepared to manage the inherent complexity of a modular stack's moving parts.
tldr-summary
Solana vs Rollup-Based Stack: Oncall Ops
TL;DR: Key Operational Differentiators
For engineering leaders managing production systems, the operational overhead of your L1 choice is a critical cost center. Here's the breakdown for keeping the lights on.
01
Solana: Unified State & Tooling
Single-Stack Simplicity: One client, one consensus, one set of RPC endpoints. This reduces the surface area for debugging and monitoring compared to managing separate L1, sequencer, and data availability layers. This matters for teams wanting to minimize vendor sprawl and standardize their alerting on a single, well-documented stack (e.g., Solana Labs RPC, Jito, Helius).
02
Solana: Predictable Latency & Cost
Sub-second finality (400ms) and low, predictable fees (often $0.001-$0.01 per tx) are native properties. You don't need to architect around L1 gas spikes or multi-layer fee estimation. This matters for high-frequency applications (DEX arbitrage, gaming) where cost certainty and speed are non-negotiable for user experience.
03
Rollup Stack: Modular Fault Isolation
Failure Domains are Contained. A sequencer outage (e.g., OP Stack, Arbitrum Nitro) doesn't halt the underlying L1 (Ethereum). Data availability issues (e.g., Celestia, EigenDA) can be debugged separately from execution. This matters for risk-averse enterprises who prioritize system resilience and the ability to failover components independently.
04
Rollup Stack: Ethereum Security & Exit
Inherited Security Model: Your users always have the EVM's battle-tested security and a canonical escape hatch via fraud or validity proofs. This reduces the burden of educating users on novel security assumptions. This matters for DeFi protocols with >$100M TVL where the cost of a catastrophic bug outweighs the complexity of managing a modular stack.
05
Solana: Oncall Risk - Client Diversity
Single-Client Dominance: >95% of stake runs the Solana Labs client. A critical bug here could halt the network, as seen in past outages. This matters for applications requiring extreme uptime SLAs, where you are betting on the robustness of a primarily single-client ecosystem.
06
Rollup Stack: Oncall Risk - Integration Complexity
Multi-Vendor Coordination: Debugging a failed transaction may require tracing through the rollup sequencer, the L1 bridge contract, and the data availability layer. This increases Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR). This matters for smaller engineering teams (< 5 DevOps) who cannot afford deep specialization in multiple protocol layers.
SOLANA VS ROLLUP-BASED STACK
Head-to-Head: Oncall Operations Matrix
Direct comparison of operational metrics for infrastructure teams managing high-throughput applications.
| Oncall Metric | Solana (Monolithic L1) | Rollup Stack (e.g., Arbitrum, OP Stack) |
|---|---|---|
Primary Failure Mode | Network-wide halt | Sequencer outage |
Downtime Responsibility | Validator set (3rd party) | Your sequencer (self-managed) |
Time to Detect & Fix | Hours to days (community) | Minutes (your team) |
State Growth Cost | ~$1.5M/TB (historical storage) | < $10K/TB (L1 calldata) |
MEV Risk Surface | Entire mempool (public) | Private mempool or shared sequencer |
Upgrade Governance | Validator vote (weeks) | Multisig or DAO (days) |
Cross-Chain Dependency | None | L1 Finality & Data Availability |
pros-cons-a
OPERATIONAL PROFILE
Solana vs Rollup-Based Stack: Oncall Ops
Key strengths and trade-offs for infrastructure teams managing production environments.
01
Solana: Unified Infrastructure
Single-layer ops: Manage one monolithic network (Solana Mainnet Beta) instead of a fragmented L1 + L2 + bridging stack. This simplifies monitoring (e.g., Solana Beach, Solscan), node operations, and incident response. Trade-off: Less control over core protocol parameters like gas pricing or block time.
02
Solana: State Bloat & Archival Demands
High-throughput state growth: ~50-100 GB of ledger data per day requires robust archival solutions (Google Cloud Bigtable, historical RPC providers). Teams must budget for significant storage costs and manage validator hardware specs closely to avoid falling behind. Critical for: Protocols with high transaction volume like Jupiter, Raydium.
03
Rollup Stack: Modular Control
Separate data availability (DA) and execution: Choose Celestia, EigenDA, or Ethereum for DA, and Arbitrum Nitro, OP Stack, or zkSync for execution. This allows fine-tuning cost, security, and performance per component. Trade-off: Introduces multi-vendor coordination and bridging risk management.
04
Rollup Stack: Sequential Failure Points
Multi-layer dependency chain: An outage in the DA layer (e.g., Celestia) or the settlement layer (e.g., Ethereum) can halt your rollup. Teams must monitor and have playbooks for each layer's health. Critical for: Protocols requiring maximum uptime but with tolerance for L1 finality delays.
pros-cons-b
Solana vs. Rollup-Based Stack: Oncall Ops
Rollup Stack: Operational Profile
A side-by-side breakdown of operational overhead, failure modes, and team requirements for monolithic vs. modular architectures.
01
Solana: Single-Stack Simplicity
Unified operational surface: One network, one consensus mechanism (PoH), one client (Jito Labs, Firedancer). Your oncall engineer troubleshoots a single, vertically integrated stack. This reduces cognitive load and toolchain sprawl.
Key Metric: 99.9% uptime over the last 90 days, with network-wide restarts resolving most critical issues in <2 hours. This matters for teams wanting a 'blockchain-as-a-service' experience without managing L1/L2 bridges, sequencers, or data availability layers.
02
Solana: Performance-Driven Firefighting
Failure modes are largely throughput-related: Congestion (e.g., mempool spam), resource exhaustion, or validator client bugs. The primary oncall playbook involves monitoring TPS dips (< 3,000), transaction failure rates, and RPC node health.
Example: A surge in NFT mints or meme coin launches can cause localized congestion, requiring RPC node operators to implement priority fee adjustments. This matters for protocols where latency predictability is critical, as you're debugging a performance problem, not a cross-chain security fault.
03
Rollup Stack: Sovereign Control & Complexity
Granular control over the stack: Choose your sequencer (Espresso, Astria), DA layer (Celestia, EigenDA, Ethereum), and settlement (Ethereum, Arbitrum Orbit). This allows for custom fee markets, execution environments, and upgrade schedules.
Trade-off: Your oncall team now manages 3-4 distinct systems. A failure in the DA layer halts your chain; a sequencer bug requires intervention. This matters for protocols needing maximal customization (e.g., app-specific privacy or governance) and teams with dedicated infra engineers.
04
Rollup Stack: Cross-Layer Incident Response
Failure modes are multi-layered and contractual: Did the sequencer go down? Is the DA layer posting batches? Are the bridge watchers alive? Debugging requires tracing a transaction through the entire modular pipeline.
Key Metric: Finality time is now a sum of parts: Rollup block time + DA inclusion delay + Ethereum settlement (~12 min). An oncall incident might require coordinating with external DA providers or bridge security councils. This matters for institutions where verifiable safety and audit trails across layers are non-negotiable, despite higher operational overhead.
CHOOSE YOUR PRIORITY
Decision Framework: Choose Based on Your Team
Solana for Speed & Scale
Verdict: The default choice for raw throughput and sub-second finality. Strengths: Native 50k+ TPS, 400ms block times, and a single global state simplify high-frequency applications. Projects like Jupiter (DEX aggregator) and Drift (perpetuals) leverage this for CEX-like UX. Your on-call team manages a single, highly performant state machine. Trade-offs: Requires deep expertise in Rust, Solana's runtime (Sealevel), and its unique concurrency model. Debugging failed transactions due to Arbitrage Bot spam or QUIC congestion demands specialized tooling like Solana Beach or Helius.
Rollup Stack for Speed & Scale
Verdict: A modular approach, trading some latency for flexibility and Ethereum security. Strengths: Optimistic Rollups (Arbitrum, Base) offer 4k-40k TPS with ~1 week finality to L1. ZK-Rollups (zkSync Era, Starknet) provide ~3k TPS with ~1 hour finality. Your team can choose the VM (EVM, CairoVM) and data availability layer (Ethereum, Celestia). Trade-offs: On-call complexity multiplies. You monitor the sequencer, bridge contracts, data availability proofs, and potential L1 reorgs. A sequencer outage on Arbitrum means your app is down until it's restored.
ON-CALL OPERATIONS
Technical Deep Dive: Failure Modes & Mitigations
When a chain halts or a bridge fails, your team needs a playbook. This section compares the operational realities of responding to and mitigating failures on a monolithic chain like Solana versus a modular, rollup-based stack.
Solana has historically experienced more frequent, full-network outages. These are typically caused by resource exhaustion (e.g., bot spam) requiring validator coordination for a restart. A well-configured rollup on Ethereum (like Arbitrum or Optimism) inherits Ethereum's liveness, so it doesn't 'halt' independently. However, its sequencer—a centralized component in most current rollups—can experience downtime, halting transaction inclusion but not the safety of funds.
verdict
THE ANALYSIS
Verdict: Strategic Recommendations for Engineering Leaders
A final breakdown of operational trade-offs between a monolithic chain and a modular stack, focusing on on-call engineering realities.
Solana excels at providing a single, high-performance operational surface because it is a monolithic L1 with integrated execution, settlement, and data availability. For example, your team's on-call scope is confined to the Solana client (solana-validator) and your own program logic, with the network consistently delivering 3,000-5,000 TPS and sub-$0.001 fees during normal operations. This simplicity is powerful but comes with the risk of correlated downtime, as seen in historical network halts, placing the burden of monitoring core chain health directly on your team.
A Rollup-Based Stack (e.g., an OP Stack or Arbitrum Orbit chain on a shared sequencer like Conduit, with Celestia for data availability) takes a different approach by distributing operational responsibility across specialized layers. This results in a critical trade-off: you gain sovereignty and predictable costs by choosing your DA layer and sequencer, but your on-call scope expands to include cross-chain messaging (e.g., canonical bridges), sequencer health, and potential DA layer liveness assumptions, adding complexity to incident response.
The key trade-off: If your priority is operational simplicity and minimizing vendor/component management for a high-throughput application, choose Solana and invest deeply in its specific client tooling and validator monitoring. If you prioritize cost predictability, execution environment sovereignty, and are prepared to manage a multi-vendor stack (e.g., EigenDA for data, Espresso for shared sequencing), choose a Rollup-Based Stack. Your decision ultimately hinges on whether you prefer a single, high-performance system to monitor or a modular system you can customize but must integrate and maintain.
ENQUIRY
Build the
future.
Our experts will offer a free quote and a 30min call to discuss your project.
NDA Protected
Confidentiality24h Response
Time to ValueDirectly to Engineering Team
No Sales Fluff10+
Protocols Shipped
$20M+
TVL Overall