Where Will Solana Be in 5 Years?

Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) will probably be a much bigger network in five years, and it might be a better investment than Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), too. However, it'll still need to make major changes to remain competitive by late 2031.

Here's what's likely to happen between now and then.

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Tokenization could be the whole ball game

For the uninitiated, tokenization is simply a technical term for recording a real asset's ownership data as a blockchain token, allowing the asset to be managed and traded on a crypto network.

According to a report by the Citi Institute, by 2030, that organization's base case calls for 3% of all U.S. public equities to be tokenized. Citi puts that at $2.6 trillion in tokenized U.S. stocks by 2030. Today, there are only $2.6 billion in tradeable tokenized stocks, so there's very likely to be a tremendous amount of capital onboarding to various blockchains via tokenization over the next handful of years, and capturing only a sliver could be enough to make a coin grow by multiples.

And Solana is currently positioned to capture a lot of that growth, not just a sliver.

As of Sept. 3, the network held $503.1 million in tokenized equities, up from $56.9 million a year prior, and currently has a market share of 19.3% in the segment, up slightly from 18.2% at the same point in 2025. It's a natural home for tokenized trading activity thanks to its rapid transaction settlement times, often on the order of a fraction of a second, and its low transaction costs, typically under a penny.

There's more than one domain of competition

If Solana can continue to onboard more tokenized capital as well as be one of the leading places where tokenized stocks change hands -- its decentralized exchanges saw around 95% of the trading volume of the entire asset class in Q2 of this year, though that proportion has since decreased significantly -- its price will probably be dramatically higher in just a few years.

To become worth more than Ethereum, however, it'll also need to chip away at that network's lead in terms of its base of other tokenized assets as well as its base of parked stablecoins, not to mention fending off other competitors vying for the same pie. Of the $38.6 billion in tokenized assets, on Sept. 3, Ethereum held a 45% share and Solana 10.5%, so there's still a large gap to close.

But a slew of major financial institutions and fintechs, including JPMorgan Chase, Franklin Templeton, VanEck, State Street, PayPal, and Visa, have already launched tokenization initiatives on the chain, and more are likely to follow. So keep an eye on how Solana continues to forge new partnerships with those institutions while expanding its base of tokenized assets, especially stocks.

If Solana can continue to retain even a slightly smaller share of the tokenization market than it has now, by the end of 2031, the coin will be worth a few times what it is today. That's my base case for its future performance. And the upside will be larger if more challenges work out in Solana's favor.

Citigroup is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Alex Carchidi has positions in Ethereum and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum, JPMorgan Chase, PayPal, Solana, and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: short December 2026 $62.50 calls on PayPal. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.