Key Points
- Solana has surpassed Ethereum in daily DEX trading volume.
- Despite this, Ethereum remains the leader in overall DeFi total value locked (TVL).
Solana [SOL] and Ethereum [ETH] are among the top cryptocurrency networks. While Ethereum has maintained dominance in many areas, recent data suggests that Solana could soon catch up.
Solana’s Potential
DefiLlama data reveals that Solana’s daily DEX trading volume has overtaken Ethereum’s, processing $1.148 billion compared to Ethereum’s $745 million. This could indicate a growing preference for Solana’s faster transaction speeds and lower fees.
Although Ethereum still leads in overall DeFi total value locked (TVL), Solana’s strong DEX volume performance could potentially elevate the protocol.
In terms of daily active addresses, Solana’s count has grown to 1.4 million, while Ethereum’s stands at 644,000. Additionally, Solana dominates in daily transactions, with 42.9 million transactions on its network compared to Ethereum’s 1.1 million.
Additional Considerations
While Solana has outpaced Ethereum in activity, it’s important to note that Layer-2s (L2s) like Arbitrum [ARB] and Optimism [OP] haven’t been considered in these calculations. These L2s serve as scaling solutions for Ethereum, processing transactions off the mainnet while still utilising Ethereum’s security. Therefore, activity on these L2s also reflects interest in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Despite Solana’s impressive numbers, questions about its long-term sustainability have been raised. High transaction volume may be driven by speculative activity or meme coin trading, which may not result in long-term value creation.
Solana’s architecture offers faster speeds and lower fees, but it has faced criticism for network congestion and past outages. Continued outages could negatively impact the sentiment around Solana and potentially deter users.
At the time of writing, both SOL and ETH tokens had seen positive growth due to recent bullish sentiment in the crypto markets, increasing by 6.6% and 3.4% respectively in the last 24 hours.