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As 2025 approaches, market experts are often discussing how competitive Ethereum and Solana are. Both cryptocurrencies have grown exponentially in 2024, but opinions differ on which one will ultimately become popular in the altcoin industry next year.
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Solana's rapid rise
Solana's outstanding numbers are attracting attention. In December, it outperformed Ethereum on several key benchmarks, including application revenue and decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume. Solana brought in approximately $141 million in application revenue. Ethereum earned $93.56 million.
Additionally, Solana’s decentralized trading volume reached a staggering $67.43 billion, compared to Ethereum’s $52.37 billion. Due to this development, several experts predict that Solana could surpass Ethereum as the superior cryptocurrency by 2025.
Analysts attribute Solana’s success to its rapid transaction speeds and minimal costs, making it particularly attractive for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) . The upcoming Firedancer upgrade is expected to improve Solana's network performance, potentially strengthening its position as a pioneer in the DeFi space.
Cryptocurrency market capitalization is $3.47 trillion on 24-hour chart: TradingView.com
Will Ethereum outperform Solana?
While Solana's stats are impressive, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says the Ethereum ecosystem and rapid development of projects could surpass Solana by 2025. He highlights how layer 2 solutions such as Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum help Ethereum scale, thereby bridging the network. The gap between trust in institutions and everyday access.
People's mental model of Ethereum is outdated. The common consensus is that Solana is cheap/easy/fun and Ethereum is slow/clunky/expensive.
But look at what's happening in the AI agent space. Some of the most exciting “fun” projects are in the works, including Clanker and Virtuals…
— Matt Hougan (@Matt_Hougan) December 18, 2024
Hougan points out that Solana's user-friendly appeal makes Ethereum more competitive, thus negating its outdated reputation as slow and expensive. He also cited the success of efforts like Clanker and Virtuals on Ethereum-based networks, which have demonstrated their ability to foster creativity while maintaining a strong infrastructure.
Ethereum's institutional appeal
On the contrary, Ethereum remains active. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recently received more than $850 million in institutional inflows, proving their continued appeal to investors. Anticipation of Ethereum's Petra upgrade has increased enthusiasm, promising significant increases in speed and overall performance.
Ethereum price has increased over the past 30 days. Source: Coin Gecko
Furthermore, the price of Ethereum is also expected to rise. Some analysts estimate that ETFs could be worth $6,000 to $7,000 by 2025, depending on ETF sponsorship and institutional investor interest.
Solana prices fell the previous day. Source: CoinMarketCap
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competitive environment
Both cryptocurrencies present particular strengths and weaknesses heading into 2025. According to Hogan, Ethereum has a good chance of success going forward, given the explosive growth in transaction volume and user interactions. Still, you can't overlook Solana's institutional support and great ecosystem.
Featured images from DALL-E, charts from TradingView
