Author: Kazu Umemoto Source: Bankless Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance
In 2024, the Ethereum and Solana communities blazed a new trail in the crypto space.
In many ways, 2024 brought the story of Bitcoin’s value to the world—Bitcoin broke through $100,000 and ushered in an epic rally. However, the focus of the crypto industry in 2024 was far more than just Bitcoin. The Ethereum and Solana communities achieved great success this year.
Although there was still a lot of infighting between the two top smart contract platforms at certain points in time, 2024 truly demonstrated the unique advantages of their respective communities. These advantages not only attracted more people to the crypto space, but also paved the way for the glory of 2025.
Today, we’ll dive into the big moments that will drive the industry forward for Ethereum and Solana in 2024, as well as three key trends for both ecosystems.
Three Trends in Ethereum
1. Ethereum Developers Fight for the Future of Crypto
In 2024, Ethereum developers bravely took on the fight and fought for the future of crypto and DeFi. Faced with aggressive regulators, the Ethereum community took the lead in launching tough rhetoric and targeted lawsuits in an attempt to fight back against the long-term suppression of crypto companies.
Institutions such as Uniswap, Consensys, and Coinbase took the initiative, and early Ethereum KOLs stood up to defend the core values of the crypto industry, challenged Gary Gensler (Chairman of the US SEC), and funded political leaders who supported cryptocurrencies in an effort to reshape the political landscape.
In 2024, crypto giants won key battles and accumulated important political capital to ensure that the values of the crypto industry will no longer be easily trampled.
2. Stablecoin growth highlights the value of cryptocurrencies
In 2024, stablecoins made significant progress in the Ethereum ecosystem. Ethena launched the USDe stablecoin, minting nearly $6 billion in a year. USDC supply almost doubled, and USDT supply also increased by more than 50%.
This growth shows that stablecoins are gradually being seen as reliable financial instruments and a way to store value. Institutions such as BlackRock have entered the stablecoin field, and its BUIDL fund supports Ethena's USDtb stablecoin. With BlackRock joining the fold, more companies may explore the potential of stablecoins to reduce daily transaction costs.
3. Ethereum launches "responsible expansion" expansion
Due to the poor price performance of ETH, the community began to deeply analyze the advantages and disadvantages of Ethereum. The community has launched a heated discussion around the expansion roadmap, with both criticism and defense.
At Bankless, we held several discussions on expansion:
• Max Resnick shared the expansion dilemma,
• Justin Drake demonstrated the development direction of Beam Chain consistent with the roadmap.
But this year was not just limited to discussions - the Dencun hard fork reduced L2 transaction costs by introducing Blob transactions, which allow L2 to store large amounts of data at low cost on the Ethereum mainnet, making transaction fees cheaper and attracting more users.
Three major trends in Solana
1. Memecoin craze attracts a large number of users
In 2024, the memecoin craze attracted millions of users to the Solana chain, many hoping to get a piece of the next 1000x coin. Pump.fun became a key player in the memecoin craze, issuing more than 5 million tokens in 2024, accounting for 50% of Solana DEX trading volume. Solana DEX has a total trading volume of $990 billion, with memecoin contributing a lot. Of course, memecoin hasn’t always been all rosy: project collapses, insider trading, celebrity scams are common, and Pump.fun’s short-lived live streaming feature also exposed issues with user misconduct. Despite this, Pump.fun remains one of Solana’s flagship projects. If the memecoin craze continues in 2025, Solana is expected to attract more users than in 2024. 2. Developers flock to the Solana ecosystem In 2024, Solana not only attracted new users, but also attracted a large number of new developers willing to join Solana. According to the 2024 Electric Capital Developer Report, Solana ranks second in global developer share, second only to Ethereum. Although Ethereum still dominates in terms of total developer numbers, Solana has added 1,000 more developers than Ethereum this year, far ahead in attracting developers. This suggests that a new wave of innovation may emerge in the Solana ecosystem, bringing more vitality to 2025.
3. Institutional interest heats up
In the past two years, SOL prices have soared by more than 1,700%, and this growth, coupled with the launch of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, has sparked market speculation about a Solana ETF.
Grayscale has submitted an application to convert its Solana Trust into a spot ETF. Considering that Grayscale has successfully converted Bitcoin and Ethereum trusts into ETFs this year, it is only a matter of time before Solana ETFs are available. If the Solana ETF is approved, it will provide a convenient investment channel for large institutions and retail investors, changing Solana's image as just a "memecoin chain" in the crypto industry to an ecosystem trusted by millions of users. Looking forward to 2025: New Year, New Narrative In 2024, the crypto industry ushered in a new narrative. In this year, Ethereum and Solana have shown their own unique development trends, which not only strengthened their own market positioning, but also jointly promoted the grand narrative of "cryptocurrency subverting traditional finance (TradFi)". Solana has consolidated its position in the hearts of retail users with the help of the memecoin craze, attracting a large number of users who are exposed to cryptocurrency for the first time. Ethereum, on the other hand, continues to be the mainstay of DeFi (decentralized finance), emphasizing stability and institutional adoption, and actively defending the core values of decentralization within the industry and on the political stage.
Looking forward to 2025, as anti-crypto forces in U.S. politics gradually lose power and regulation becomes clearer, the crypto space is expected to see explosive growth. The value of Bitcoin as "digital gold" has been accepted by global investors, and the opportunity for Ethereum and Solana is coming. It is a critical moment for them to show the world "how Internet money can truly drive the global economy."
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