Could Solana Overtake Ethereum by 2026?

Every bull market has its David-and-Goliath subplot. In crypto right now, Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) is the nimble rising star that's aiming to take the crown from the heavyweight champion, Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH). The prize is becoming the smart contract platform that mainstream capital chooses to use first.

Both coins have surged in the past three years, though Solana's gain has been faster, sparking talk of a coming "flippening," where its market value might eclipse Ethereum's. Is the chatter just noise, or is there a signal here that investors should heed?

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Why Solana is going to keep closing the gap

Crypto users and investors tend to be an impatient bunch. Effectively, that means that when they're evaluating a new chain, its speed comes first.

In that vein, independent benchmarks show that Solana consistently pushes thousands of real user transactions per second (TPS), and also that it can burst beyond 50,000 TPS when stressed with a high volume of load. In contrast, Ethereum's base layer still confirms a block every 12 to 13 seconds, limiting it to double‑digit values of TPS before needing to try to shunt users to costlier Layer 2 (L2) chains, which often require different tooling to interact with.

Velocity attracts users. In September 2024, Solana logged 3.2 million daily active wallet addresses versus Ethereum's 410,000. The same pattern holds this year, with the numbers hardly changed. Per DeFiLlama, a crypto data aggregator, Solana handled $2.2 billion of decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) volume in the last 24 hours as measured in the afternoon of June 24.

That's almost on par with Ethereum's $2.5 billion, despite Ethereum commanding nearly four times the total value locked (TVL) on its chain. The takeaway here is that new capital is likely to flow to where it can transact the fastest, and Solana is punching in the same weight class as Ethereum despite its significantly smaller size.

Revenue data tell the same story. Between June 23 and June 24, Ethereum generated about $1.3 million in chain revenue and $2 million in decentralized application (dApp) revenue. Solana brought in $121,000 in chain revenue and and nearly $4 million in app revenue. In other words, Solana's apps are already earning roughly double what Ethereum's do, while its market cap is only about 25% as large. The metric of profitability per dollar of network value is thus working significantly in Solana's favor.

The market cap gap also is narrowing. Ethereum's market capitalization hovers near $291 billion, while Solana's sits at about $77 billion. To outrank Ethereum today, Solana would need a roughly 280% price increase.

That sounds steep, yet Solana has posted gains of that magnitude in shorter stretches before.

What could stall the flippening (and why it still might happen anyway)

Despite Solana's significant gains, Ethereum is hardly standing still.

Its latest upgrade package, Pectra, went live on May 7, bundling 11 improvement proposals that expand block space, streamline wallet user experience, and raise the staking caps. Average gas (user) fees are now down since the update, though transaction speeds are roughly the same as before.

The upgrade thus blunts Solana's cost advantage and potentially buys Ethereum time to work on its speed.

Beyond the performance of its core tech, Ethereum's moat is its developer community. It still commands the largest pool of app developers and liquidity in crypto finance, though Solana added more new developers than Ethereum in 2024. Those network effects buy Ethereum even more breathing room to iterate and copy useful features that competitors debut. And the capital on its chain is likely to be at least a bit sticky.

So could SOL really tack on 280% in six quarters to flip Ethereum? It might, if macro liquidity surges, and if it wins against its rival in key growth segments like artificial intelligence (AI), decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization.

Barring that confluence of factors, a flippening is vastly more plausible in the 2029‑2030 window than it is within the next couple of years.

For long‑term investors, the right approach is straightforward. Solana offers higher growth potential at the cost of higher execution risk. Ethereum offers a sturdier, slower‑growing base that is still innovating and could still offer substantial returns.

Holding both coins would hedge the unknowns, but if you're forced to pick one horse for outperformance over the next five years, Solana looks like the better bet.

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Alex Carchidi has positions in Ethereum and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.