Solana Lags Behind Ethereum Despite Solving Scaling Issue: Standard Chartered Report

Despite its speed, low fees, and potential for high-throughput financial applications, Solana still lags behind Ethereum in terms of performance and adoption, according to a new report from Standard Chartered.

International bank Standard Chartered has released an in-depth analysis of Solana (SOL), predicting that the coin could reach a price of $275 by the end of 2025. However, the organization also frankly said that Solana will continue to underperform Ethereum over the next two to three years due to its lack of real-world use cases beyond the meme coin craze.

Solana vs Ethereum Comparison

According to Geoffrey Kendrick – Head of Digital Assets at Standard Chartered – Ethereum (ETH) is expected to reach $4,000 by the end of this year and could reach $7,500 by 2029. Meanwhile, although SOL reached an all-time high of over $293 earlier this year, its current price is still around $180 and is expected to reach $500 by 2029.

The price ratio between SOL and ETH is currently around 14, and is predicted to increase slightly to 17 before falling back in 2029. This reflects Solana’s temporary lag while Ethereum continues to expand its dominance with network upgrades such as Pectra – which improve security, efficiency and staking capabilities.

More real-world applications needed

Solana is still largely used for meme coin transactions, which have cooled off after its early-year boom. Kendrick believes that for Solana to truly take off, it will need to be integrated into high-volume applications like large-scale decentralized finance (DeFi), Web3 social networks, or traditional consumer platforms.

“Solana is designed to handle cheap, fast, and reliable transactions, which is ideal for high-volume applications,” Kendrick writes. “But achieving real scale in these areas may take a few more years.”

Expectations for ETFs

Standard Chartered also highlighted the long-term potential, predicting that Solana — along with XRP — could be the next crypto assets to receive spot ETF approval, after Ethereum and Bitcoin. If approved, this could bring in a huge influx of traditional capital and add legitimacy to the Solana ecosystem.

Conclusion

Despite being perceived as “cheap” relative to the GDP (application revenue) it generates, Solana still has great potential if it moves beyond being a “meme coin” blockchain to becoming a true infrastructure for mainstream Web3 applications. But as Kendrick points out, “low usage and cheap transactions are not a good combination” – and Solana needs more than just speed to catch up to Ethereum.