Since Solana rose in popularity (and on-chain activity) in 2021, the Layer 1 chain has often been touted as the “Ethereum killer” that could flip Ethereum to become the number one smart contract-enabled blockchain.
While that hasn’t happened yet, Ethereum and Solana remain head-to-head as two market-leading smart contract chains that are attracting developers, users and new projects.
In this comparison guide, you’ll learn about the similarities and differences between Ethereum and Solana, how they compare across key metrics and their relative strengths. Let's dig in!
Back in the day, Ethereum was the original blockchain built for programmability. It was launched in 2015, and it quickly became an industry standard in many ways, including the building of decentralized applications (dApps) using smart contracts.
The ETH, the native coin on the Ethereum blockchain, has remained the second biggest cryptoasset by market cap since its launch in 2015.
Solana is a smart contract blockchain platform founded in 2017 and launched in 2020. It’s playing in the same programmability field as Ethereum, but its approach is different in many ways.
SOL, the native token on the Solana blockchain, has performed very well since its launch, largely remaining among the top cryptocurrencies by market cap.
There’s more to both Solana and Ethereum than what meets the eye at first glance, so let’s go over the similarities and differences in more detail.
A consensus mechanism of a blockchain defines the way this network agrees on the validity of a transaction, as well as how a new block is glued to this never-ending chain.
Solana uses a consensus mechanism known as Proof of History (PoH). This mechanism is designed with internal timestamping capacity that helps validate transactions faster.
Meanwhile, Ethereum uses Proof of Stake (PoS), which is actually its second consensus mechanism and maybe not the last one. It previously used Proof of Work (PoW), the same as Bitcoin still does, but later moved to PoS.
The consensus mechanism defines how fast your favorite blockchain confirms your transactions and how much you need to pay for it.
Solana has enough horsepower to add a few thousand transactions per second. This also translates to low fees for you, often even below one US cent per transaction.
On its front, Ethereum is a slower horse, as it has a transaction throughput that ranges between 15 and 30 transactions per second. Compared to Solana, this is quite low, and that has the consequence of generally high gas fees on the network, which often exceed $1 per transaction. However, speed and fees aren’t the only important things you need to consider when choosing a blockchain.
Most of the time, Solana and Ethereum are generally stable and secure networks. However, both have had technical hiccups.
Like most other major blockchains, Solana's core protocol hasn’t been utterly compromised. However, it has experienced outages with a few lasting for several hours.
Similarly, Ethereum has had few outages, with one of the most notable being the failure of Infura in November 2020. Infura is an infrastructure service provider used by many companies within the Ethereum ecosystem for things like running nodes on the network on behalf of projects. Thankfully, the Ethereum network itself stayed online, but it was significantly slowed down by this incident.
As far as security breaches go, in 2016, Ethereum suffered its biggest hack in history, called the DAO hack, where $60 million worth of ETH (or 5% of its supply at the time) was temporarily stolen. While this wasn’t actually a compromise of the core protocol, but of a smart contract, the Ethereum rescue team decided to do a hard fork that would undo the theft.
Solana is built to be scalable. It was designed from the beginning with high throughput and low fees. Its consensus mechanism is purposely meant to handle significant traffic without experiencing network congestion.
Meanwhile, the Ethereum base chain is currently less scalable. However, Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism dramatically increase the amount of transactions users can take while taking advantage of Ethereum's security.
Ethereum has a huge and varied ecosystem of applications building on top of it. The Ethereum Virtual Machine has become an industry standard, with other blockchains adopting it to for compatibility with not only Etheruem but Ethereum protocols as well. Likewise, there are more developers who are used to working with Ethereum than Solana.
Meanwhile, Solana’s ecosystem is rapidly growing. Its ecosystem is still smaller than Ethereum’s, with less total value locked (TVL) across a smaller number of applications. Nevertheless, it has achieved much and it’s becoming a go-to blockchain for certain types of use cases, particularlly in trading and is now the home of meme and AI coins.
Ethereum remains the biggest blockchain by developer activity, boasting close to 1,700 sub-ecosystems, over 117k repos and over 36k weekly commits, at the time of writing. Solana is the second largest, with over 350 sub-ecosystems, 62k repos, along with close to 4,000 weekly commits.
Both networks are decentralized. However, as decentralization exists on a spectrum, Ethereum is considered more decentralized than Solana.
Solana’s consensus mechanism requires powerful hardware and high-speed internet from validators, which makes it difficult for smaller operators to participate. This has led to concerns about centralization.
Ethereum, on the other hand, requires validators to lock up at least 32 ETH, which, at the time of writing, is more than $80k. This raises similar concerns, limiting the number of entities who can afford to participate.
That said, both networks don’t have a single authority holding absolute control in either of them.
Ethereum is largely the go-to blockchain for institutional players. With more capital on chain, more applications, more developers, and higher security, it is the default choice for larger projects including real-world assets (RWA), with Ethereum having over $7 billion locked while Solana has over $300 million.
Neither Ethereum nor Solana is regulated as a technology or network. That said, r
In May 2024, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved spot Ethereum ETFs, sending a positive sign to ETH holders. Solana’s token currently doesn’t have any ETFs in the US , but the first of its kind launched at the end of April 2025 in Canada.
Ethereum remains the most successful NFT ecosystem.
At time of writing, Ethereum NFT volume is 5.5x that of Solana's (according to NFTPulse). According to Magic Eden's own cross-chain marketplace, Ethereum collections take 8 of the top 10 collections by trailing 30d volume, including enduring collections like CryptoPunks, Pudgy Penguins, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Milady Maker, Mutant Ape Yacht Club as well as newer collections like Good Vibe Club.
For it's part, Solana NFTs currently claim 3 collections in the top 20, including Froganas, SMB Gen 2, and Mad Lads.
Many DeFi concepts originated on Ethereum, including AMMs and DEX aggreagtors.
One way to measure the size of defi ecosystems is by the total value of assets locked (TVL). According to Defillama, at time of writing Etheruem's TVL is a staggering $62.7 billion compared to Solana's impressive $8.8 billion.
That said, Solana's speed and ease has led to true adoption for defi use cases, including Solana swaps and buying meme coins.
Solana continues to lead meme coin actvity across chains.
Today, many of the best-performing meme coins overall are found on the Solana blockchain. That list includes DogWifHat (WIF), Bonk (BONK), Popcat (POPCAT) and Cat in a Dog's World (MEW). Nevertheless, Ethereum matches the lists with meme coins like Shiba Inu (SHIB), PepeCoin (PEPE) and Floki Inu (FLOKI).
Next, let's look at the pros and cons between these two competitors.
Source: TradingView
Although the price of ETH has remained significantly higher than that of SOL, the two have generally moved in a similar fashion for the longest time. However, during the past five years, ETH is up 1,040%, while SOL has gained almost 30,000%.
Ethereum is better for people looking for a huge user base, high security, stability and decentralization, but don't mind lower speeds and high gas fees. Meanwhile, Solana is faster, cheaper, and more accessible.
Ultimately, the answer to the question of which one’s better, Ethereum or Solana, is that it depends on your needs as a user.
If you’re looking to trade fungible tokens and NFTs but can’t choose between Solana and Ethereum, visit Magic Eden. Swap tokens, buy NFTs (learn how to buy NFTs here), and engage with both ecosystems on Magic Eden App.
There are several bridges between Solana and Ethereum, and the choice between them depends on your preferences. Some examples include Portal by Wormhole, deBridge and Allbridge. If you simply need to swap SOL for ETH or vice versa, you can also do so from within the Magic Eden Wallet.
The information provided on this website is provided for general educational purposes only and is in no way financial or investment advice. Certain information may have also been provided to us or prepared by third parties; these materials are provided for convenience and are not an endorsement by Magic Eden. Magic Eden is not liable for any errors, changes or amendments to such information, including any actions taken in reliance on such information.
