Ethereum or Solana? Fidelity’s 2025 outlook reveals surprising insights

• Solana’s Firedancer upgrade is set to attract investor attention in 2025.
• Meanwhile, Ethereum’s stable fundamentals and ETP accessibility highlight its long-term investment potential.

The rivalry between Ethereum [ETH], the largest altcoin, and Solana [SOL] remains a focal point in the evolving digital assets landscape.

Highlighting this ongoing competition, Fidelity Digital Assets, a division of Fidelity Investments, recently published a report titled “2025 Look Ahead: Is it ‘too late’ to enter digital assets?”

Ethereum vs. Solana

The paper, authored by Max Wadington, delved deeply into ETH’s trajectory through its “Ethereum Outlook” section, exploring critical metrics, anticipated upgrades, and their potential impact on investors as the crypto market heads toward 2025.

This analysis sheds light on the dynamics shaping the competition between these two leading blockchain networks.

Remarking on the same, Wadington noted, 

“We think fundamentals are most important for long-term investors. With that said, Ethereum has strong developer activity, total value locked (TVL), and stablecoin supply.” 

He added, 

“Comparatively, Solana’s revenue and TVL are improving at a faster rate than Ethereum’s and seem to have captured significant community mind share this past year.”

That being said, Solana’s revenue model, heavily influenced by memecoin trading, reflects a cyclical pattern. While it thrives during bull markets, it tends to retract significantly in bear markets.

Hence, a parallel can be drawn to Ethereum, where Uniswap serves as a key use case driven by speculative activity.

However, ETH’s fundamentals appear slightly less reliant on such speculation, potentially offering greater long-term stability.

While these foundational aspects provide insights for long-term investors, they do not necessarily determine which network might outperform in the short term.

Why? Because price trends in the near term often hinge on prevailing market narratives.

Ethereum vs. Solana upgrades

Looking ahead to 2025, Solana’s Firedancer upgrade is expected to create considerable excitement within its community by promising a significant boost in transactions per second (TPS).

This could strengthen SOL’s value proposition and attract more attention from investors.

On the other hand, Ethereum’s Prague/Electra upgrade, while crucial for enhancing the platform’s unique security features, is less likely to generate similar hype as it doesn’t directly impact Ether’s value proposition.

Nonetheless, Ethereum retains a competitive edge through its accessibility via exchange-traded products (ETPs), a factor that could remain significant depending on regulatory developments.

Solana steals the limelight

However, despite recent price declines of both altcoins, Solana continues to outshine its competitors in certain key metrics. Thus, solidifying its status as a dominant player in the speculative market.

On the 6th and the 7th of January, Solana’s Decentralized Exchange (DEX) volume surged past that of Ethereum and Base combined.

It reached an impressive $3.98 billion compared to ETH’s $1.7 billion and Base’s $1.2 billion.

This marked a lead of over $1 billion in trading volume, highlighting SOL’s robust network activity and its appeal in speculative markets like memecoins and AI-related assets.