Solana has cemented its standing as a formidable contender to Ethereum, and it’s not simply due to the memecoin site visitors it processes.
In response to knowledge from Defillama, the community processed $920 million in 24-hour DEX spot volume as of April 6, whereas its rival, Ethereum, trailed behind with $563.47 million.
The figures verify that lead isn’t any fluke, particularly as it persists throughout longer time frames. For instance, over the previous seven days, Solana DEX spot volume was $11.49 billion, and during the last 30 days, it was $51.54 billion. As compared, Ethereum DEX spot volume over seven days was $7.62 billion and $36.55 billion over the previous 30 days.
The opposite networks within the high 5 are Base, BSC, and Polygon. Regardless of comparatively decrease exercise ranges in comparison with January 2025 highs, not one of the competitors appears capable of shake what’s beginning to appear like a DEX buying and selling exercise duopoly between Solana and Ethereum.
Solana’s latest DeFi exercise
Market watchers credit score the dominance to retail momentum. Ethereum was in the identical place up to now, however now that the Ethereum Basis and the community’s founder have shifted their sights to greater issues like changing into the monetary rail for the wedding of TradFi and Web3, Solana appears to have succeeded in consolidating nearly all of DEX volume amongst day by day customers who need low-cost charges and excessive throughput.
Ethereum nonetheless boasts comparatively deeper liquidity swimming pools, however that’s clearly no match for Solana’s velocity and value benefits, which prioritize execution.
Solana isn’t solely successful in DeFi
Whereas it continues to lead Ethereum in DeFi exercise, Solana can be making very apparent progress in one other section Ethereum has lengthy dominated — RWA tokenization.
In response to latest figures, Solana’s tokenized RWAs, apart from stablecoins, are actually over $2 billion in market worth, marking a few 10x progress over the previous 12 months, pushed principally by tokenized equities.
Reviews declare month-to-month switch volume for tokenized funds, shares, and commodities on Solana is up 10x year-over-year, and holder rely for these belongings surged 440% year-on-year to 218,000 addresses.
Retail curiosity has surged, and institutional merchandise proceed to emerge, attracting extra capital and boosting total belief within the community. In response to Token Terminal, Solana at the moment hosts 9 of the ten most held tokenized inventory deployments.
Ethereum’s RWA market lead faces aggressive stress
Solana’s slice of the lively RWA market capitalization has grown meaningfully, however Ethereum nonetheless instructions about 61% of the tokenized asset market and $206 billion in annual settled volume, all that with a 40% YoY progress fee that continues to make it a lovely selection for institutional gamers.
These institutional entities have at all times been predominantly Ethereum-centric. Nonetheless, they’ve been allocating extra assets to Solana resulting from its velocity and distribution benefits for tokenizing shares and funds.
Issuers within the RWA sector are more and more selecting Solana for those self same causes, as effectively as its lively consumer base and low-friction on-chain ecosystem.
Regardless of all this, specialists imagine it’ll take rather more to displace the house Ethereum has carved out in large-scale institutional tokenization. Even Token Terminal admits Ethereum’s present use case is centered round stablecoin settlement and real-world asset tokenization.
Nonetheless, Solana’s menace to the community’s dominance continues to develop. As of April 2026, Solana has turn out to be dwelling not solely to high-frequency buying and selling but additionally to tokenized RWAs, and specialists assume it’s now a very worthy rival to Ethereum.
In case you’re studying this, you’re already forward. Stay there with our newsletter.
