VanEck: Solara's target price is $330

According to VanEck's report on September 25th, Solana (SOL) is expected to reach $330 and may grow to 50% of the current market value of Ethereum (ETH), mainly driven by Solana's advantages in speed and transaction processing.

The report cites throughput data from Solana, whose network can process thousands of transactions per second (TPS), which is 3000% higher than Ethereum's TPS. In addition, Solana has 1300% more daily active users than Ethereum, and its transaction fees on the Solana network are nearly 5 million times cheaper than Ethereum.

The author of the report points out that Solana's significant advantages in speed and cost-effectiveness make it more advantageous than Ethereum in the fields of payments and remittances. Especially stablecoins are considered one of the main drivers of decentralized financial activities, which can leverage Solana's excellent processing capabilities to transfer cost savings to users.

The report mentions that retail investors are "gradually realizing" Solana's potential as a smart contract platform to challenge Ethereum, while they are skeptical that institutional investors have not yet noticed Solana's advantages. The report speculates that the slow adoption of Solana by institutional investors may be due to their hesitation in abandoning "blue chip assets" like ETH and embracing relatively new Solana instead.

Why Ethereum is not performing well

In early September 2024, VanEck released a report analyzing the reasons for suppressing Ethereum prices. According to VanEck's analysis, Ethereum's poor price performance is mainly due to the value of its Layer 2 network being extracted.

The Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum has grown rapidly due to the Dencun upgrade in March 2024, which significantly reduced transaction fees for the Ethereum Layer 2 network.

Due to the rapid growth of these Layer 2 projects and the significant reduction in transaction costs, the revenue of Ethereum Layer 1 has dropped significantly by 99% since March 2024. However, in late September 2024, transaction fees on the Ethereum network began to recover.

VanEck also specifically pointed out that some users have turned to faster Layer 1 networks such as Solana and Sui (SUI), which is another important factor suppressing Ethereum prices and transaction revenue. The report suggests that although Ethereum still has a first mover advantage, this advantage is rapidly shrinking.