The market value of Ethereum (ETH) increased by over $70 billion on May 21, nearly matching Solana’s (SOL) market value of approximately $80 billion. This significant growth in market value occurred as hopes rose for the approval of a spot Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States.
Market Value Grew as Much as Solana in One Day
Analysts believe the gap between Ethereum and its competitors like Solana will continue to widen in the coming months due to the potential ETF launch. The impressive increase in ETH’s market value, currently at $453 billion, highlights its significant lead over Solana, which has a market value of $82 billion.
ETH’s price rose by over 19% in one day. With this price increase, ETH’s market value grew by nearly 90% of Solana’s total market value. This remarkable price rise and market value growth underscore the significant impact institutional adoption could have on ETH’s market position.
“Short-Term Outlook for Ethereum is Incredible”
Despite some predictions that Solana could surpass Ethereum in the next bull cycle, current market dynamics suggest otherwise. Ilan Solot, co-head of digital assets at Marex Solutions, described the short-term outlook for ETH as “incredibly bullish,” citing factors such as the ETF announcement, market positioning, and favorable macroeconomic conditions. Solot noted that a large portion of ETH’s liquidity is locked in staking, further strengthening its market position.
Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has become the leading smart contract blockchain network, supporting over 4,000 decentralized applications and critical decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols like Uniswap and AAVE. Ethereum’s robust infrastructure and reliability have made it a cornerstone of the blockchain ecosystem, unlike Solana, which has experienced outages.
During bull runs, investors sometimes switch to networks like Solana to avoid Ethereum’s network congestion and higher transaction costs. Earlier this year, Solana’s share of global trading volume on decentralized exchanges increased due to the memecoin hype, leading to discussions about SOL potentially surpassing ETH. However, given the speculation around the spot Ethereum ETF and recent price movements, such discussions seem premature.
