Ethereum vs Solana: Which coin should you choose for long term gains?

• Evaluating Ethereum vs Solana to find out which one has a more competitive edge.
• The tokenomics may even out the score, leading to a surprising conclusion.

The Ethereum [ETH] versus Solana[SOL] showdown is here. Ethereum has been holding it down as the number 1 altcoin for quite a while.

However, Solana’s performance has been impressive over the last few months. But between the two networks, which one stands to deliver the most gains?

Solana demonstrated strong growth in the DeFi segment in the last 12 months, making the Ethereum vs Solana comparison more effective. This is because Ethereum previously dominated the DeFi segment.

For starters, Solana’s on-chain volume saw explosive growth since October last year. The highest daily volume was recorded at around $3.4 billion.

Source: DeFiLlama

In comparison, Ethereum has also maintained significant daily volumes, mostly within the same range as Solana during the same period.

However, Ethereum was able to achieve over $7 billion in daily transactions on 5th August during the peak of the recent crash.

Source: DeFiLlama

While these charts may indicate a bit of a lead for Ethereum, they highlight how far Solana has come during the last few months. Especially in terms of sizing up the Ethereum network in terms of volume.

We decided to compare the two networks from a user growth or activity perspective. For example, Ethereum had a tad over 454,000 active users in the last 24 hours while Solana had 0ver 979,000 active addresses.

Solana was also ahead in terms of transactions. It achieved 33.08 million transactions in the last 24 hours while Ethereum’s daily transaction count in the same period was 1.03 million transactions.

Ethereum versus Solana tokenomics

Ethereum has been maintaining a lead over Solana in term of marketcap.  For example, Ethereum had a $311.9 billion marketcap which was about 4.6 times higher than Solana’s $66.7 billion marketcap.

However, if we map the two together, we observed that Solana’s marketcap has also been growing at a faster pace compared to that of Ethereum.

Source: Coinmarketcap

Based on these findings, one would easily conclude that Solana has the most growth potential. But does this Translate to their native cryptocurrencies?

ETH’s marketcap is 4 times that of Solana but Solana has a lower price tag and a more active DeFi ecosystem. From a tokenomics perspective, ETH has a much lower supply at 120.28 million coins.

On the other hand, SOL has 466.2 million SOL coins in circulation. Roughly 3.8 times fewer than ETH.

Is there a clear winner?

Based on our assessment of Ethereum vs Solana, it is clear that Solana is putting up a good fight. Our analysis of the tokenomics did not offer much of a clear advantage since Solana has a higher circulating supply.

Read Ethereum’s [ETH] Price Prediction 2024-2025

The short term outlook may favor SOL’s price action more than ETH based on network activity and growth.

The long-term outlook might favor Ethereum if it can sustain robust DeFi activity and demand for ETH. This is because Solana has a 30% inflation but Ethereum is deflationary.