Solana Just Processed 25.3 Billion Transactions in a Quarter -- How Much Upside Is Left?

Solana (CRYPTO: SOL), the world's second-largest blockchain development platform after Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), just processed 25.3 billion transactions in the first quarter of 2026. That put it far ahead of Ethereum, which only processed 200 million transactions.

But it's still much smaller than Ethereum, which reaches significantly more developers through its Layer 1 (L1) blockchain, Layer 2 (L2) rollups, and integrations with other blockchains. So can Solana, which has nearly doubled in value over the past five years, continue to expand its ecosystem as it gains more developers?

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Why is Solana attracting so many developers?

Solana and Ethereum are both proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains that natively support smart contracts, which are used to develop decentralized apps and other crypto assets. However, Solana integrates its own proof-of-history (PoH) mechanism, which timestamps transactions before they're validated, into its PoS blockchain to accelerate those transactions.

That upgrade enables Solana to process nearly 1,200 transactions per second (TPS), compared to Ethereum's real-time L1 speed of 24 TPS. Solana also has a theoretical maximum speed of 65,000 TPS, which also crushes Ethereum's 238 TPS.

According to Electric Capital, Solana added 11,534 developers from January to September 2025, bringing its total count to 17,708. Ethereum gained 16,181 developers during that period and led the market with 31,869 developers by the end of last September. Ethereum is still leading the market, but Solana's speed makes it an emerging threat in the PoS market.

How much upside does Solana still have?

At first glance, Solana seems to be crushing Ethereum in terms of total transactions. However, that's actually an apples-to-oranges comparison because Solana's consensus mechanism includes validator vote transactions (recorded on its ledger as part of how the network agrees on its own state) that aren't present in Ethereum's blockchain.

Those validator vote transactions actually account for a significant portion of Solana's 25.3 billion quarterly transactions -- so we can't directly compare them to Ethereum's 200 million transactions. That said, Solana is likely still growing faster than Ethereum.

However, Ethereum remains the larger developer ecosystem, and it's catching up to Solana through its L2 rollups, which bundle transactions and process them off-chain at higher speeds. That competition could limit Solana's upside over the next few years.

It's impossible to predict how high Solana might go, but I think it could more than triple to its record high of $295 (from last January) if the crypto market warms up again. It's attracting plenty of developers, it has plenty of irons in the fire, and the approvals of its first staking ETFs last year could attract a lot more yield-seeking investors.

Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.