Solana has emerged as a revenue leader in the cryptocurrency market, surpassing Ethereum significantly, despite a broader market decline and sluggish retail trading activity. According to data from DefiLlama, Solana generates more revenue than Ethereum, with Solana-based apps outperforming Ethereum apps by a factor of ten, as indicated by crypto researcher Aylo.
Even when including Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling solutions, such as Arbitrum and Base, Solana maintains a significant revenue advantage, generating over $8.4 million on February 9th, compared to Ethereum’s $875,571. Although Solana’s total value locked (TVL) trails behind Ethereum’s, at $9.5 billion compared to nearly $56.8 billion, Solana remains triumphant in terms of app-generated revenues.
A key driver behind Solana’s revenue surge is the memecoin trading frenzy, which significantly boosted the network’s decentralized finance ecosystem. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Solana’s cumulative app revenue grew by 213%, spurred by memecoin speculation, according to crypto research firm Messari. Memecoin launchpad Pump.fun alone recorded $235 million in revenues for the quarter, marking a 242% increase.
Aylo notes that this speculative activity in cryptocurrencies resembles an unwinnable lottery that attracts users globally, thereby emphasizing Solana’s capture of a major crypto use case. Despite Solana’s token SOL demonstrating notable growth nearly double that of ETH in early 2024, Aylo argues that Solana remains well-positioned and is not overvalued compared to other layer-1 and layer-2 blockchain networks.
