2025-12-30 21:22:14

Recently, I came across an interesting data point: since 2025, Solana's protocol revenue has actually surpassed Ethereum's. Honestly, my first reaction was—really? After all, Ethereum has been the industry leader for many years, and Solana has often been criticized for network instability. But after digging into the details, I found the story behind the numbers even more fascinating.

**Hard Data Is Right Here**

This year so far, Solana's protocol revenue is about $250 million, while Ethereum's is $140 million. Looking at a longer timeline, the gap becomes even more striking—Solana grew from $28 million in 2021 to $480 million in 2024, whereas Ethereum declined from $510 million to $142 million during the same period. This contrast is definitely worth pondering.

**Fees and Speed—Are Users Really Voting with Their Feet?**

Why does Solana attract so many active users? Simply put—costs are extremely low. A single transaction costs only $0.00025, plus a processing speed of 65,000 TPS. For high-frequency scenarios like meme coin trading, NFT minting, and blockchain gaming, that's practically paradise. Although Ethereum's Layer 2 solutions have also reduced costs, activity on the mainnet has noticeably shrunk, directly impacting protocol revenue.

**A Positive Feedback Loop in the Ecosystem**

The decentralized exchanges (DEX), launch platforms, and mobile app ecosystems on Solana are booming. For example, Pump.fun, a launch platform, contributed over $400 million in revenue in 2024. This kind of ecosystem effect is hard to see on Ethereum DeFi protocols, where liquidity is more dispersed and ecosystem participants are divided, which directly lowers overall revenue.

This isn't to say Ethereum is no longer viable, but rather that the market is reallocating traffic and resources in its own way.

SOL1.41%

ETH1.04%

DEFI-1.46%

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airdrop_huntress

· 7h ago

Solana this time really nailed it, while ETH is still relying on its old reputation. After all the effort on Ethereum's layer 2 solutions, users are still flocking to Solana to mint memes. With such a huge cost difference, who can stand it? That data from pump.fun is outrageous—really, 400 million a year, have you seen that on ETH? This is just a shift in market dominance, nothing more to say. But hold on, Solana's stability is still an issue, can we really trust that data?

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SleepyValidator

· 7h ago

Sol really is rising, but ETH's Layer 2 ecosystem still has potential. It all depends on who wins the MEV war.

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SelfRugger

· 8h ago

Solana this wave is really awesome, with extremely low fees. The previous issues of network instability are gradually being forgotten. How did ETH end up in this state? Once the dominant player. pump.fun earns 400 million a year, this number is a bit outrageous. Meme coin trading is all about Solana, there's no way around it. No matter how much Layer 2 is optimized, it can't save the decline of the mainnet? It seems ETH needs to rethink. Once the ecosystem tilts, it's very hard to reverse. Fragmented liquidity indeed hurts. $0.00025 per transaction, this is not even in the same league as ETH. Ethereum now feels somewhat directionless. Solana has firmly captured the demand for meme coins and NFTs, ETH really has no effective countermeasures.

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