Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko shared new data showing that Solana is outperforming Ethereum in annual revenue, highlighting what he sees as a pivotal shift in the way value is distributed across the crypto market.
Infographics by DeFi Development Corp. shows a projected comparison of Ethereum and Solana on-chain revenue. According to the analysis, Solana’s revenue is expected to reach $1.4 billion, compared to Ethereum’s revenue of $522 million.
In a separate post about X, Yakovenko described the past year as “crazy” and questioned whether open, permissionless protocols can grow sustainably and remain profitable in the long term. He argued that this challenge remains unresolved in much of the industry.
Yakovenko added that he believes that the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies will continue to grow, but that ultimately it needs to be “divided by revenue” and not purely based on stories and speculation. In that context, he suggested that layer 1 blockchain has a single clear path to long-term relevance.
“L1’s sole focus is on the execution layer,” Yakovenko wrote, adding that the most successful networks will be those that provide “global, decentralized, low-latency, high-throughput censorship resistance.”
It’s been a crazy year. Whether open permissionless protocols can actually grow and remain profitable is still an open question.
I believe that the overall MCAP of cryptocurrencies should continue to grow and eventually be split by revenue. I only shot L1 with this… https://t.co/J0A7UPJYSK
— toly 🇺🇸 (@aeyakovenko) December 20, 2025
The comments come amid a growing debate about revenue generation and actual economic activity across major blockchains, including Ethereum, as investors increasingly focus on fundamentals rather than just usage metrics.
Solana’s Institutional Adoption
The American investor said a number of large companies, including BlackRock, Blackstone and JPMorgan, could start using the network for trading.
Earlier this month, Scaramucci predicted that Solana would be one of the “big winners” when it comes to tokenization. He has publicly predicted that Solana could surpass Ethereum in market capitalization.
The Solana ETF has recorded nearly $700 million in cumulative flows since its emergence a few months ago, according to Pharcyde data. This rapid growth is not surprising, as the ETF has seen strong demand since the initial Solana launch.
