Solana is on track to out-earn Ethereum in annual revenue for the first time — and some in the ecosystem are calling it a “regime shift.” What happened - Solana treasury firm DeFi Development Corporation (DFDV) posted on X that Solana (SOL) is pacing to surpass Ethereum (ETH) in year-to-date revenue. The chart DFDV shared shows SOL with roughly $1.4 billion YTD versus about $522 million for Ethereum. - For context, full-year 2024 revenue looked very different: Ethereum recorded about $2.5 billion in revenue while Solana posted roughly $1.42 billion. DFDV says the new YTD data reflects a major reversal in the revenue balance between the chains. Why it matters - DFDV calls the shift more than a milestone — “a regime shift” — arguing Solana is becoming the “revenue chain” where tomorrow’s dApps will live and scale. - Over five years Ethereum’s revenue has fallen by about 90%, while Solana’s has surged roughly 5,000%, per DFDV’s figures — a striking divergence that highlights how quickly network economics can change in crypto. What’s driving Solana’s revenue - DeFiLlama and DFDV point to several Solana dApps as key contributors: Pump.fun, Axiom, Meteroa, Jupiter, and Phantom. The network is also collecting base fees from users, adding to total revenue. Reactions from the ecosystem - Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana’s co-founder, called it a “crazy year” and framed the milestone as an open test of whether open, permissionless protocols can sustainably grow and retain revenue. He argued that long-term success will come down to the execution layer — delivering global, low-latency, high-throughput, censorship-resistant execution. - Not everyone agrees the upside is durable. DeFi maximalist Scribbler tweeted that “Solana is dying,” pointing to active trader counts: more than 30 million unique traders per month from November through February, falling to about 1 million per month afterward. He and others attribute the decline to a slowdown in meme-coin trading, which drove a large portion of Solana’s earlier activity (including attention from high-profile launches like the TRUMP meme coin). - Crypto commentator Marty counters that the network’s user mix is shifting rather than collapsing: equity tokenization and stablecoin activity could replace meme-coin volumes. Indeed, institutional and payments signals support this view — Galaxy Digital and Forward Industries have tokenized stocks on Solana, stablecoin transactions are rising, and Visa recently announced plans to begin USDC settlements on Solana for U.S. banks. Bottom line Solana’s recent revenue run-up is a notable development that underscores fast-moving shifts in blockchain activity and monetization. Whether this is a permanent reordering or a cyclical swing depends on continued developer traction, real-world use cases (stablecoins, tokenized equities, payments), and whether Solana can sustain high-quality transaction volume beyond meme-driven spikes. As Yakovenko put it, the race may ultimately be decided at the execution layer — low-latency, high-throughput, censorship-resistant infrastructure that supports diverse, durable economic activity. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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