Despite the doomtalk around Solana that has persisted in the industry since the FTX implosion, the network still remains one of the biggest networks in the industry. After comparing it to Ethereum, it becomes clear that Solana easily reaches the level of the second-biggest network on the market in several ways.
In one of his most recent posts, Chris Burniske shared surprising data and highlighted the fact that Solana had executed just as many NFT transactions as Ethereum to date. Such numerous transactions tied to NFT should not surprise users that much: back in 2021, Solana became one of the most popular networks among NFT creators thanks to the relatively cheap transactions and the popularity of networks in the space.
Was news to me that @solana has executed just as many #NFT transactions as @ethereum to date (h/t @ournetwork__) pic.twitter.com/LORXavqc4g
— Chris Burniske (@cburniske) December 10, 2022
On the other hand, Ethereum's fees have been reaching obscene levels: users had no other choice but to pay up to $150 per operation on the network, making Ethereum practically unusable for the majority of users in the industry.
The same tendency became relevant for the DeFi industry. At the beginning of the bull run, the majority of decentralized applications were running on Ethereum. But as the bull market ascended toward its peak in November, the volume of decentralized solutions tilted toward alternative networks like Solana or Layer 2s, for the reason we mentioned above: extremely high fees that made the network unusable.
Unfortunately, the death of both the DeFi and the NFT industries led to a gradual outflow of funds from both Solana and Ethereum networks. While the second one is successfully holding through the bear market thanks to the variety of updates and improvements, Solana has lost most of its value and might need a lot more than just the support of retail investors to recover in the foreseeable future.
Alex Dovbnya
Yuri Molchan