Could Solana Overtake Ethereum by 2026?
Every bull market has its David-and-Goliath subplot. In crypto right now, Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) is the nimble rising star that's aiming to take the crown from the heavyweight champion, Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH). The prize is becoming the smart contract platform that mainstream capital chooses to use first.
Both coins have surged in the past three years, though Solana's gain has been faster, sparking talk of a coming "flippening," where its market value might eclipse Ethereum's. Is the chatter just noise, or is there a signal here that investors should heed?
Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »
Why Solana is going to keep closing the gap
Crypto users and investors tend to be an impatient bunch. Effectively, that means that when they're evaluating a new chain, its speed comes first.
In that vein, independent benchmarks show that Solana consistently pushes thousands of real user transactions per second (TPS), and also that it can burst beyond 50,000 TPS when stressed with a high volume of load. In contrast, Ethereum's base layer still confirms a block every 12 to 13 seconds, limiting it to double‑digit values of TPS before needing to try to shunt users to costlier Layer 2 (L2) chains, which often require different tooling to interact with.
Velocity attracts users. In September 2024, Solana logged 3.2 million daily active wallet addresses versus Ethereum's 410,000. The same pattern holds this year, with the numbers hardly changed. Per DeFiLlama, a crypto data aggregator, Solana handled $2.2 billion of decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) volume in the last 24 hours as measured in the afternoon of June 24.
That's almost on par with Ethereum's $2.5 billion, despite Ethereum commanding nearly four times the total value locked (TVL) on its chain. The takeaway here is that new capital is likely to flow to where it can transact the fastest, and Solana is punching in the same weight class as Ethereum despite its significantly smaller size.
Revenue data tell the same story. Between June 23 and June 24, Ethereum generated about $1.3 million in chain revenue and $2 million in decentralized application (dApp) revenue. Solana brought in $121,000 in chain revenue and and nearly $4 million in app revenue. In other words, Solana's apps are already earning roughly double what Ethereum's do, while its market cap is only about 25% as large. The metric of profitability per dollar of network value is thus working significantly in Solana's favor.
The market cap gap also is narrowing. Ethereum's market capitalization hovers near $291 billion, while Solana's sits at about $77 billion. To outrank Ethereum today, Solana would need a roughly 280% price increase.
That sounds steep, yet Solana has posted gains of that magnitude in shorter stretches before.
What could stall the flippening (and why it still might happen anyway)
Despite Solana's significant gains, Ethereum is hardly standing still.
Its latest upgrade package, Pectra, went live on May 7, bundling 11 improvement proposals that expand block space, streamline wallet user experience, and raise the staking caps. Average gas (user) fees are now down since the update, though transaction speeds are roughly the same as before.
The upgrade thus blunts Solana's cost advantage and potentially buys Ethereum time to work on its speed.
Beyond the performance of its core tech, Ethereum's moat is its developer community. It still commands the largest pool of app developers and liquidity in crypto finance, though Solana added more new developers than Ethereum in 2024. Those network effects buy Ethereum even more breathing room to iterate and copy useful features that competitors debut. And the capital on its chain is likely to be at least a bit sticky.
So could SOL really tack on 280% in six quarters to flip Ethereum? It might, if macro liquidity surges, and if it wins against its rival in key growth segments like artificial intelligence (AI), decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization.
Barring that confluence of factors, a flippening is vastly more plausible in the 2029‑2030 window than it is within the next couple of years.
For long‑term investors, the right approach is straightforward. Solana offers higher growth potential at the cost of higher execution risk. Ethereum offers a sturdier, slower‑growing base that is still innovating and could still offer substantial returns.
Holding both coins would hedge the unknowns, but if you're forced to pick one horse for outperformance over the next five years, Solana looks like the better bet.
Should you invest $1,000 in Solana right now?
Before you buy stock in Solana, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Solana wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $704,676!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $950,198!*
Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is1,048% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to175%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.
See the 10 stocks »
*Stock Advisor returns as of June 23, 2025
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Some bosses happy to give staff Monday off for a 4-day Canada Day long weekend
Social Sharing Anyone who works Monday to Friday and is keen for a long weekend this Canada Day has likely had to do a bit of calendar juggling to cope with the ill-timed holiday. The statutory holiday falls on a Tuesday this year, forcing many to work an odd Monday squeezed between days off, unless they use a vacation day to eliminate the wonky schedule. Some startup companies say they're calling Monday a wash and giving staff a paid day off in order to smooth out the mid-week quirk and create a long weekend. While it might not make sense on paper, Klarify founder Moody Abdul said he believes in prioritizing employee happiness. "It's that 'if I take care of you, you'll take care of us' kind of mentality," Abdul said. Connecting the Canada Day holiday to the preceding weekend is just one way to demonstrate worker appreciation, said Abdul, whose company provides AI-driven note-taking and administrative tools for therapists. For those in Quebec, it's the second holiday Tuesday in a row, after Saint-Jean Baptiste Day on June 24 forced many Fête nationale celebrants to grapple with their own odd workweek. But with Canada Day following so close behind, it's not uncommon for Quebecers to take the whole week off between the two holidays, much the way many treat the stretch between Christmas and New Year's Day. Of course, not every employer can offer such accommodations, and full-time workers with less shift leeway will have to choose to take a vacation day or just make do with an odd schedule next week. WATCH | Preparations ramping up for Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa: Preparations ramping up for Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa 4 days ago Duration 2:57 Ani Siddique, a research assistant at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, said he asked far in advance for Monday off in order to get ahead of colleagues with the same idea. "I had to ask for it, but I planned for things one or two months in advance," he said. Morad Affifi, who sat in a downtown Toronto park after a shift on Friday, said the majority of his planned Canada Day festivities take place over the weekend, but he, too, dipped into his vacation bank to avoid working Monday. WATCH | Canada Day celebrations light up London's Trafalgar Square: Canada Day celebrations light up London's Trafalgar Square 2 hours ago Duration 4:03 Suze Mason, co-founder of the digital health platform Sprout Family, said her five staff members have the Monday off, and she didn't expect the move to have much of an operational impact on her company. Sprout Family helps co-ordinate fertility care through workplace benefits programs. She said many of its clients, including larger Canadian organizations, plan to treat Monday like a holiday. "It felt like it was the right business decision to give our employees a day to rest and recharge, while also not having as much of a direct impact on the business," Mason said. She said extending the holiday to match that of the companies Sprout Family works with can also make it easier for staff to disconnect, knowing they aren't missing out on anything crucial. "Sometimes when you're on vacation and the business is racing ahead without you, it can feel stressful," Mason said. Vineet Johnson, founder and CEO of IRegained, said he's made it a recurring practice to bridge awkward gaps between days off when they occur. Johnson, whose company develops neuro-rehabilitation devices, said he did the same last December when Boxing Day fell on a Thursday and otherwise would have forced people to return to work for just one day before the weekend. "It's an easy incentive, a no-brainer incentive," he said.
Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Globe and Mail
G7 agrees to exempt U.S. companies from higher taxes
The United States and the Group of Seven nations have agreed to support a proposal that would exempt U.S. companies from some components of an existing global agreement, the G7 said in a statement on Saturday. The group has created a 'side-by-side' system in response to the U.S. administration agreeing to scrap the Section 899 retaliatory tax proposal from President Donald Trump's tax and spending bill, it said in a statement from Canada, the head of the rolling G7 presidency. The G7 said the plan recognizes existing U.S. minimum tax laws and aims to bring more stability to the international tax system. Opinion: The G7 is dead – time to move on to the G6 U.K. businesses are also spared higher taxes after the removal of Section 899 from Mr. Trump's tax and spending bill. Britain said businesses would benefit from greater certainty and stability following the agreement. Some British businesses had in recent weeks said they were worried about paying substantial additional tax due to the inclusion of Section 899, which has now been removed. 'Today's agreement provides much-needed certainty and stability for those businesses after they had raised their concerns,' Britain's finance minister Rachel Reeves said in a statement, adding that more work was needed to tackle aggressive tax planning and avoidance. G7 officials said that they look forward to discussing a solution that is 'acceptable and implementable to all.' In January, through an executive order, Trump declared that the global corporate minimum tax deal was not applicable in the U.S., effectively pulling out of the landmark 2021 arrangement negotiated by the Biden administration with nearly 140 countries. He had also vowed to impose a retaliatory tax against countries that impose taxes on U.S. firms under the 2021 global tax agreement. This tax was considered detrimental to many foreign companies operating in the U.S.
Globe and Mail
2 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Microsoft Stock (MSFT) Hits All-Time High as AI Trade Comes Roaring Back
Microsoft's (MSFT) stock is at an all-time high on June 27 and on the cusp of breaking above $500 a share as the artificial intelligence (AI) trade comes roaring back. Confident Investing Starts Here: MSFT stock was trading at $499.30 at noon hour and could close above $500 a share on a split adjusted basis. The current rally coming off April lows has pushed Microsoft's share price up 19% this year and put its market capitalization at $3.70 trillion, second only to Nvidia (NVDA) at $3.84 trillion. Analysts and traders on Wall Street are now debating which technology giant will be the first to reach a $4 trillion market cap, Microsoft or Nvidia. Several analyst have also been raising their ratings and price targets on MSFT stock during its current bull run. Wedbush tech analyst Daniel Ives recently raised his price target on Microsoft's shares to $600 from $515 while reiterating a Buy rating on the stock. Bullish Sentiment Analysts and investors are turning increasingly bullish on Microsoft as sentiment towards artificial intelligence (AI) again turns positive. The Seattle-based technology giant's share price has also been rising since the company reported strong first-quarter financial results in May that showed hefty growth in the Azure cloud computing unit. More recently, reports have surfaced that the Windows maker is planning to cut thousands of jobs as it looks to reduce its labor costs while increasing its AI spending. Microsoft is seen as a leader in generative AI and is cascading the technology across its various business segments and consumer-facing products. Is MSFT Stock a Buy? Microsoft's stock has a consensus Strong Buy rating among 35 Wall Street analysts. That rating is based on 30 Buy and five Hold recommendations issued in the last three months. The average price target on MSFT stock of $521.41 implies 4.71% upside from current levels. Disclaimer & Disclosure Report an Issue
