Not regarding folding knives per se...But...

I recently watched Ed Fowler's video on making his knives using 51200 ball bearings.

If what I see there holds up across his knives, they would certainly out perform S30V in edge retention, chip resistance, and blade strength.

Ed's knives are not corrosion resistant, but many of us like steels like O1 anyway....

No mass production operation can put the time into making a single knife that is involved with Ed's methods, but then he touts his knives as High Endurance Performance Knives and his prices reflect the time that he puts into each knife.

The matter of edge retention on S30V comes up in some of the forums--with users complaining that knives that are hardened to Rc57-58 don't keep an edge very well. Then some of them disassemble their folders and send the blades out to be hardened to Rc60 or a bit harder.

I don't know if those "upper hardened" S30V blades are then prone to chipping the edge, but if a knife is only used for the purpose it is intended (cutting) and not as a general purpose prying or twisting tool, then the edge probably would not chip at any hardness unless it was run up against something hard that it was not intended to cut.

Larry