Ethereum vs. Solana (Round 5,697) 🥊

Data Source: DefiLlama

TL;DR

• For the first time ever, Solana beat out Ethereum in terms of overall trading volume for the month of July; which is interesting in itself - but what’s more interesting is why that happened.

Full Story

July is officially over (can you believe it??) which means we can now take a backwards look at what happened in the crypto markets last month.

Today we’re going to focus on a battle that’s as old as t…

Well it’s actually only a bit over four years old - but in crypto years, that’s a long time.

We’re talking about Ethereum vs. Solana!

(Specifically, the amount of usage of DEX’s built on Ethereum compared to those built in Solana).

For the first time ever, Solana beat out Ethereum in terms of overall trading volume for the month (see header image 👆).

Which is interesting in itself - but what’s more interesting is why this might be the case.

Ultimately it comes down to three main things:

1. Branding! Seriously, if Twitter is anything to go by, the number of times we’ve heard people talking about Solana as a ‘fun’ blockchain to build on is straight up weird.

2. Meme coins. The undisputed champion of the current cycle’s narrative so far are meme coins.
   
   Those developed on the cheaper blockchain options (Solana and Base) have blown up, while classic NFT projects like Bored Apes built on Ethereum have tumbled in value and trade volume.

3. Finally: cost, community and creativity. The more the web3 industry matures, the less people seem to be willing to spend money on gas fees.
   
   Solana is not only 100-1000 times cheaper for gas (transaction) fees over Ethereum (depending on network congestion), these days Solana really doesn’t have any less functionality than Ethereum either.
   
   Plus, the way Solana has bridged the gap between the developer community and the users is something to admire.

While this seems like an ad for the Solana blockchain - it’s not!

Both Ethereum and Solana have their unique place in the web3 ecosystem.

But data don’t lie!

And based on the current trajectory, when we extrapolate this data out a few weeks, months or years, it looks like Ethereum could be in for a rough ride.

Let’s see how things pan out!