Solana's Revenue Surges, Outpacing Ethereum Despite Market Cooling
1min read Solana's revenue continues to outpace Ethereum and its layer-2 scaling chains (L2s), despite a cooling cryptocurrency market and a slowdown in retail trading activity. According to data from DefiLlama, Solana generated over $8.4 million in revenue on February 9, while Ethereum's revenue stood at $875,571. This outperformance is even more pronounced among the networks' applications, with revenues from Solana apps exceeding rival Ethereum apps by as much as ten-fold, as noted by crypto researcher Aylo in a February 10 post on the X platform.
Solana's strength holds even after factoring in Ethereum's L2s, which host a large portion of the network's trading activity. Aylo noted that "you can plug in any L2 you want and add it on top and it doesn’t make any difference right now." While Ethereum's top L2s, Arbitrum and Base, have roughly $14 billion and $11.5 billion in total value locked (TVL), respectively, according to data from L2Beat, Solana's TVL continues to lag Ethereum's, at $9.5 billion versus nearly $56.8 billion, according to data from DefiLlama.
The surge in Solana's revenues has largely stemmed from increased memecoin trading, which was the driving force of the network's decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem in 2024. According to Messari, a crypto research firm, Solana's cumulative app revenue increased by 213% in the fourth quarter of 2024, primarily due to memecoin speculation. Memecoin launchpad Pump.fun clocked $235 million in Q4 revenues, for a quarter-over-quarter increase of some 242%, Messari said.
Aylo noted that "just like online gambling never ceases, neither will this gambling/speculation, whether you like it or not (people like to play unwinnable lotteries). Solana has captured one of crypto’s biggest use cases," providing a baseline of solid metrics that supports SOL's valuation, which has grown at nearly double the pace of ETH's since the start of 2024, according to data from TradingView. Despite the SOL token's outperformance, Aylo noted that "Solana is in a 
