Solana has been gradually creeping up behind Ethereum even before the crypto winter began. The network had grown in popularity among non-fungible token (NFT) and decentralized finance (DeFi) users who had been fleeing Ethereum due to the high cost of transacting on the network. Nevertheless, Ethereum had managed to maintain its lead ahead of Solana. That is until now when the latter has barreled ahead.

Solana Transaction Volume Grows

One major area in which Ethereum has consistently dominated has been the volume of transactions being carried out on the network. Other DeFi and NFT networks have had to battle for the second position but Solana has brought the fight to the fore as the crypto winter rages on. The network has seen transaction volumes soar higher than that recorded on the Ethereum blockchain, making it the smart contract network with the most transactions.

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This comes even as transaction fees on the Ethereum network have dropped to two-year lows. Despite this, the cost of transactions on Solana remains incredibly low compared to Ethereum, making it enticing for users. It also means that Solana is better for carry out small transactions given that users do not have to worry about paying more in gas fees than the amount that they are actually moving across the blockchain. 

SOL declines to $33 | Source: SOLUSD on TradingView.com

Solana transaction figures came out to about 630,000 transactions for the last week. While Ethereum’s had come out lesser than 500,000, meaning that Solana transactions had surpassed that of Ethereum by more than 30% for the last 7-day period.

Winning The NFT Game

The transaction volume is not the only way that Solana is giving Ethereum a run for its money. As the NFT space continues to grow, Solana has been capturing a larger market share. This has been made possible with the NFT marketplace, Magic Eden, which has garnered popularity due to a number of successful SOL launches such as DeGods and Okay Bears collections.

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This has drawn more project founders to the network. Its community is growing especially given the lower gas fees required for minting on Solana. Even with the bear market and decline in NFT volume, SOL NFT transactions come out ahead of Ethereum for the previous month.

The performance price-wise of the two digital assets has not been encouraging though. In the last 7 days, SOL has lost 11% of its value while ETH has declined 7.40% in the same time period. There has been some recovery in the last 24 hours but at 2.98% and 5.15% respectively, both SOL and ETH still have a long way to go before they reach their previous all-time highs.