From meme coins to DeFi dominance: how Solana caught up to Ethereum’s early growth curve

While Ethereum laid the foundation for smart contracts, 21Shares found that Solana’s speed and cheap transactions are driving adoption across a broader spectrum, faster than Ethereum.

Solana’s revenue engine has matured at a pace few in the industry could have anticipated, and has now clearly surpassed Ethereum’s early growth trajectory.

From meme coin mania, DeFi, AI and RWAs, Solana has managed to capture several on-chain revenue streams that Ethereum couldn’t monetize early on, a new report suggests.

Solana’s early growth curve

According to 21Shares the blockchain generated approximately $2.85 billion in revenues between October 2024 and September 2025, after an average of almost $240 million per month.

Peaks during periods of intense trading activity were found to exceed $600 million, with January 2025 marking the all-time high at $616 million. This rise was largely driven by the meme coin mania, including coins like Trump Coin. Even after the speculative frenzy subsided, Solana’s monthly revenues remained in the $150 million to $250 million range. Such sustained numbers showed that the chain’s success “isn’t just a speculative flash in the pan.”

A closer look at the revenue composition reveals a highly diversified ecosystem. Trading applications such as Photon and Axiom contributed $1.12 billion, or 39% of the total, by enabling faster swaps, advanced execution and high-frequency activity.

In addition to trading, Solana’s infrastructure supports a broad spectrum of DeFi, AI, DePin and tokenized real-world asset applications. The architecture, which can execute thousands of transactions per second at a cost of less than $0.01, has effectively transformed Solana into a 24/7, global “on-chain Nasdaq,” allowing it to rival established Web 2 companies like Palantir ($2.8 billion in 2024) and Robinhood ($2.95 billion) in annual revenue.

Perspective control

The contrast with Ethereum during its early years couldn’t be clearer. Between 2019 and 2020, about four to five years after Ethereum’s launch, monthly revenues averaged less than $10 million, which is less than 5% of what Solana now produces on a monthly basis.

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In peak months, Solana’s revenues are over 50x higher than Ethereum’s early numbers. While Ethereum’s growth has been limited by congestion and modest gas fee revenue in an emerging DeFi ecosystem, Solana has leveraged high throughput and low fees to monetize a broader range of activities much earlier in its lifecycle.

Daily active addresses on Solana now consistently reach 1.2-1.5 million, compared to Ethereum’s 400,000-500,000 in its early years.

Solana’s revenue growth has not been linear. 21Shares found that just two years ago, between October 2022 and September 2023, total network revenues were just $13 million, which can be attributed to early skepticism amid outages and market turbulence. However, the 220x increase in the last twelve months was a shift from experimental blockchain to a commercially viable ecosystem.

Institutional interest followed shortly afterwards. Currently, there is more than $3 billion of SOL on the balance sheets of publicly traded companies, and multiple treasury initiatives are underway from companies such as Forward Industries, Pantera Capital and Brera Holdings.