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From Iron Ore to Blockspace

Why Solana is the Bessemer Process of Crypto

Introduction​

Every industrial revolution begins with raw materials and a breakthrough that makes them cheap, abundant, and usable.
In the 1700s and 1800s, that raw material was iron, transformed by the Bessemer process into cheap steel, which in turn unlocked railroads, skyscrapers, and global industry.

Today, the raw material is blockspace. And if Bitcoin and Ethereum were the early furnaces, then Solana is the Bessemer process — the breakthrough that makes blockspace cheap, fast, and abundant enough for mass adoption.

Iron Ore → Crypto (The Raw Material)​

  • Iron ore in 1700s England: Known to be valuable, but hard to process. Expensive, limited, and reserved for niche uses.
  • Crypto today: Bitcoin proved digital scarcity; Ethereum proved programmable money. But the output was costly (slow throughput, high fees).

Raw material existed, but not at industrial scale.

Early Furnaces → Bitcoin and Ethereum​

  • Blast furnaces and early smelting: Proved iron and steel could be made, but with impurities, high cost, and bottlenecks.
  • Bitcoin: The blast furnace of crypto — a pure proof of concept. Showed digital money works, but throughput capped it.
  • Ethereum: Expanded into programmable contracts, but with “impurities” of high fees and latency.

Early breakthroughs, but still pre-industrial.

The Bessemer Process → Solana​

  • Henry Bessemer, 1856: Introduced a way to blow air through molten pig iron, burning off impurities and making steel cheap, abundant, and strong.
  • Solana: A new design, written in Rust, engineered for speed and throughput. Firedancer, Alpenglow, and IBRL philosophy keep making blockspace cheaper and more reliable.

Just as Bessemer steel unlocked railroads and skyscrapers, Solana’s throughput unlocks apps that feel like Web2 but are powered by DeFi.

Open-Hearth & Arc Furnaces → Firedancer, Alpenglow, Double-Zero​

  • Refinements after Bessemer: Siemens-Martin open-hearth and electric arc furnaces improved control and efficiency.
  • Solana’s refinements: Firedancer (client diversity), Alpenglow (execution optimization), and upcoming upgrades (“double-zero” era).

The base breakthrough is here; the refinements scale it into global infrastructure.

Steam Engines & Canals → Wallets and Infrastructure​

  • Steam engines and canals: Enabled resources to move faster, powering the industrial economy.
  • Wallets, stablecoins, bridges: The infrastructure layer of crypto. USDC as “paper money,” wallets as rail cars, protocols as canals moving liquidity.

Not glamorous, but essential for scaling the system.

Railroads & Skyscrapers → Killer Apps​

  • Steel’s visible impact: Railroads, bridges, skyscrapers — what everyday people actually saw.
  • Crypto’s future impact: Gaming with liquid assets, social apps with financial rails, creator economies with real-time payouts.

People don’t care about blockspace itself. They care about what it lets them build and use daily.

Paper Money → Stablecoins​

  • Fiat contracts and notes: Freed commerce from hauling gold, increased velocity of money.
  • Stablecoins & tokenized assets: Let people transact quickly without touching volatile coins. The bridge between “crypto rails” and everyday usage.

This is the monetary glue that makes the system usable for the mainstream.

The Missing Piece: Mobile​

  • In history: railroads and steel didn’t matter until they were embedded in daily life.
  • In crypto: the equivalent breakthrough is happening with mobile.

The Solana Foundation’s first phone, Saga, was proof of concept. Its successor, the Seeker, is the first true step toward mass adoption:

  • dApp store built in
  • Integrated wallet
  • UX that feels as simple and safe as Coinbase — but running on-chain.

For someone who’s used to juggling wallets and has a relatively high level or paranoia, this feels safe. I've heard all the horror stories. I myself lost about a 10x gain - got the original funds back though, due to depositing $5k literally a day before the FTX fiasco (and therefore the deposited funds were locked... so I couldn't pull everything out of that account.

For newcomers, it’s seamless enough to not even feel like crypto. That’s the inflection point: when the rails vanish into the experience.

Personal note: I’d love to see the source code for Seeker. It’s my dream to work on something this close to the metal — where hardware, system software, and financial rails converge.

Conclusion​

  • Bitcoin & Ethereum: Early furnaces, powerful proofs of concept.
  • Solana: The Bessemer process — the breakthrough that makes blockspace abundant.
  • Firedancer, Alpenglow, double-zero: The arc furnaces — refinements that scale globally.
  • Killer apps: The railroads and skyscrapers of crypto — still emerging, but inevitable.

We don’t yet know which apps will be the skyscrapers of crypto. But we know the steel is here. And that steel is Solana blockspace.