- Solana processed around 637 million transactions last week on Chainspect’s data, less than 15 million Ethereum on L1, due to fees and memecoin chaos.
- Strong sales in products like PUNCH and WIF drive Solana’s dominance, with SOL near $84 and a market cap of $48B placing it as the king of sales.
- ETH low L1 count masks large L2 use on Base and Arbitrum post-Dencun; focuses on high-value DeFi consolidation with strong ETFs.
Ethereum has been the most popular blockchain in terms of transactions since its inception, taking the crown of the most used chain of Layer 1. According to the latest data from Chainspect, there is a significant difference in the activity of the network for the past seven days, where Solana has been dominating Ethereum by recording the largest number of transactions.
The lower price and more retail space are some of the reasons that allowed Solana to process 637 million transactions last week. In comparison, Ethereum recorded only 15 million transactions during the same period. What is interesting is that the community will be divided as the levels of activities listed are new Layer 1s in the future.
Solana shines with speed
The credit for Solana’s amazing calculation is the “sustainable wealth” and the memecoin frenzy of 2026. Projects like PUNCH and WIF have turned from simple jokes into frequent merchandise, with SOL’s hybrid Proof-of-History (PoH) system allowing the network to perform thousands of operations per second. This limited penetration has turned Solana into a “fixed first stop” for retailers who are hampered by lower gas prices at other chains.
With market capitalization hovering around $48 billion and SOL trading near the $83.85 mark, the network is prioritizing horizontal upgrades. The ability to process hundreds of millions of weekly transactions without major disruption despite concerns about the implementation of validators has made it the undisputed home of high-quality commerce, gaming, and real-time payment services. For many, the number of 637 million is proof of SOL’s goal of becoming the “Nasdaq of Blockchains.”
Ethereum Suffers from Layer 2 Migration Effect
15 million ETH transactions every week may seem like the network is slowing down, but the reality is much more complicated. Following the 2024 Dencun upgrade and the 2026 “Biannual Upgrade” cycle, Ethereum has successfully evolved into a Layer 2-centric architecture. High speed vehicles have migrated to rollups such as Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism, where the availability of “blob-based” data has reduced costs by 90%.
The price of ETH Part 1 has evolved into the “backbone” of a sustainable economy with high security, stable value rather than high-end sports facilities. Although the amount of its investment is small, Total Value Locked (TVL) and the trust of the institutions are based on the mainnet. With $1.2 billion in ETFs entering each week at the beginning of this month, ETH is prioritizing its position as a valuable investment asset rather than trading numbers.
SOL & ETH Futures
In terms of SOL, the amount of money they sell results in a fixed amount of money, although the low cost per transaction means that the network relies on a fixed rate to maintain its economy. In the case of Ethereum, the move to L2s has significantly reduced the temperature of ETH on the mainnet, leading to a “value-based” problem. When the L1 payment is low (currently between $0.18 and $0.50), the deflationary pressure that drove the price of ETH has been reduced.
If it is Solana network can maintain its 500M+ weekly traffic while continuing to attract stablecoins, the “bottom” of SOL can rise. A break above the current resistance would see the stock test the $120 level as the trade-driven activity begins to turn into a strong demand charge.
For ETH, the focus is not on the 15 million transactions of L1, but on the tens of thousands of transactions per second that are possible on its L2 environment. If the “Biannual Upgrade” continues to lower the cost of L2-to-L1 implementations, financial services from the rollups will eventually return to the mainnet security budget, which could drive ETH to the $3,500 region in the second half of the year.
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