Solana’s incredible performance since the beginning of the year has strengthened its reputation in the industry, positioning it as one of the best blockchain networks around. Despite enduring numerous obstacles in recent years, Solana has made significant improvements across the board, achieving 100% uptime year-to-date. At press time, the TVL on the blockchain has doubled the figure recorded in 2023 as it looks to push the boundaries of what is possible on a blockchain network.
Solana vs Ethereum – Comparison
Being an open-source project, Solana, like Ethereum, relies on the true decentralized nature of blockchain to deliver efficient DeFi solutions. However, since Solana comes with lower fees, it has become more attractive for traders and developers alike. Presently, Ethereum is far above Solana, thanks to its vast ecosystem but there are clear indications that the latter is catching up, particularly amid the ravaging meme coin surge.
Last month, Solana’s meme coin volume reached $178 million, surpassing Ethereum’s $138 million. Also, around March 4, Solana overtook Ethereum in terms of DEX trading volume. Then, the former’s trading volume rose to $2 billion to surpass Ethereum’s $1.8 billion. Although Ethereum retained its position again barely 24 hours later, the development raises possibility of Solana overtaking Ethereum in the long-run.
Like Ethereum, Solana is quite popular for hosting scores of innovative crypto projects, including meme coins, thanks to its speed and scalability. Presently, the blockchain remains one of the top networks that can effectively scale 1,000 transactions per second. Beyond its speed and scalability, it also comes with other developer-friendly features like comprehensive documentation to enable project create new and industry-standard features.
In essence, Solana’s developer-friendly ecosystem enhances users’ experiences and open valuable opportunities for integration, partnership, and exposure to a diverse range of audience.
Ethereum, on the other hand, has maintained its dominance as the largest smart chain blockchain networks around. That said, with the level of growth witnessed by Solana in recent years, it has become a major rival to Ethereum, with many tipping the former to take over in the long-run.
How Solana is Catching Up with Ethereum
Ethereum has established itself as one of the largest ecosystems thanks to its versatility and relevance across numerous sectors of the blockchain. The network has been used in housing projects in the NFT, DApp, DeFi, and Meme coin landscape among many others.
Meanwhile, Solana is enjoying significant growth of late that has convinced a sector of the crypto community to tip the network in dislodging Ethereum as the largest blockchain.
To an extent, Solana has shown promising signs of overtaking Ethereum due to how it is rapidly closing on its counterpart. For instance, in 2022, Ethereum controlled about 90% of the market share in the NFT landscape. By 2023, the market dominance reduced to 72.3% as SOL and Bitcoin gained more ground against Ethereum in 2023.
Since the Q3 of 2023, Solana has shown no signs of slowing down in catching up with Ethereum. Between Q3 and Q4 of the year, Solana NFT trading volume soared by 541% from $0.07 billion to $0.45 billion. However, despite the growth, as at December 2023, Solana only controls 7.4% of the market share in the NFT sector while Ethereum still controls about 72.3%.
Hence, the figure above indicates that Solana still has a huge growth to cover in overtaking Ethereum in the NFT landscape. Likewise in the DeFi landscape, Ethereum controls $53.64 billion out of $95.49 billion of the Total Value Locked (TVL) in the DeFi space. Consequently, Solana only has a small portion $4.36 billion of the total TVL in the DeFi sector.Â
Conclusion
Solana is indeed enjoying significant growth of late and closing on Ethereum across numerous sectors. Nonetheless, the target of overtaking Ethereum may not come anytime soon. Ethereum is a vast and evolving ecosystem which is attractive to project developers as a result of its enabling infrastructure.
On the flip side too, Solana is an attractive network for developers due to its high throughput and low transaction fee. However, it still has a long way to go in catching up with Ethereum.