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Solana’s Steady Climb: Can It Eclipse Ethereum?
- Solana’s token, SOL, has gained over 300% in 2023 amid several new and exciting ecosystem projects and collaborations.
- Ethereum has a much broader mainstream appeal than Solana, meaning that it will likely retain its position as King of DeFi for the immediate future.
- However, Solana’s technical aspects are superior to Ethereum’s, especially in terms of scalability.
Solana (SOL) has enjoyed a stellar past six weeks, with the prominent DeFi coin posting impressive gains of nearly 300% since early October. The coin’s run has come as part of the broader altcoin market starting to gain momentum, but investors are specifically bullish about the Solana ecosystem’s broadening partnerships with high-profile businesses. Firedancer, Squads and MonkeDAO headline just some of the several big-name projects Solana is currently aligned with.
Can Solana Dethrone Ethereum?
Solana has had an excellent year, both in terms of price performance and increased adoption – but the coin is still down 75% from its peak and has a market cap 1/10th of the size of Ethereum (ETH). Solana’s community has long considered itself a potential “Ethereum killer” and that the network will eventually become the de facto platform for hosting decentralised applications, games and more. However, Ethereum has a significant advantage – name recognition. While Solana is one of the most popular coins in the crypto industry, the broader public is still likely less exposed to news and information on the project compared to Ethereum and Bitcoin. This means that Solana is likely years away from having a shot at taking over Ethereum’s title as the number two to Bitcoin.
In spite of this, on the technical side of things, Solana has a very real case for being a better alternative to Ethereum for app developers and DeFi users. Solana is renowned for having extremely low transaction fees – an average of about US$ 0.001 per transaction. By comparison, the average Ethereum gas fee is currently around US$ 1.81 (AU$ 2.78). Solana also boasts significantly superior throughput, meaning it can handle much larger volumes of user activity than the Ether ecosystem.
Cathie Wood, CEO and founder of Ark Invest, agrees:
Ether was faster and cheaper than Bitcoin, that’s how we got Ether. And Solana is even faster and more cost-effective than Ether
Cathie Wood, CEO and founder of Ark Invest 
Author
Ben Knight
Ben Knight is a writer and editor from Melbourne with a passion for all things music and finance. He enjoys turning complex topics – especially the technical details of cryptocurrency – into digestible bites that anybody can understand. He acquired his Master’s in Writing, Editing and Publishing from RMIT in 2019 and has run his own creative writing business ever since.
