#Write2earn #Ethereum 's Bullish Surge Highlights the Challenges for #Solana
Solana (SOL) is often cited as a potential rival to Ethereum (ETH), but recent market movements highlight the difficulty of this challenge.
In December, an analyst suggested Solana might surpass Ethereum in market capitalization during the next bull cycle. However, this week’s activity shows the scale of that challenge. On Monday, Ethereum's price surged over 19%, adding $70 billion to its market cap, now at $453 billion. This increase nearly matches 90% of Solana's total market value of $82 billion.
This surge followed renewed optimism about the approval of a spot ether exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the U.S., which would attract mainstream institutional investors. Currently, only bitcoin has this advantage.
Ethereum remains the second-largest digital asset, after bitcoin's $1.38 trillion market cap. Solana ranks fifth.
Ilan Solot, co-head of digital assets at Marex Solutions, commented: "The short-term outlook for ETH is extremely bullish. The ETF announcement is almost a black swan event for most investors. Markets are significantly underweight in ETH, much of its liquidity is locked in staking, and the macro environment is favorable."
Ethereum, launched in 2015, supports over 4,000 decentralized applications and critical DeFi protocols like Uniswap and AAVE. Unlike Solana, Ethereum has not experienced outages.
During bull markets, some traders prefer Solana to avoid Ethereum's congestion and high fees. Earlier this year, Solana’s share of global DEX trading volume increased due to a meme coin craze, prompting discussions about SOL potentially overtaking ETH. However, given recent ETF speculation and ether’s performance, such discussions seem premature.
