Investors looking for life-changing gains in cryptocurrency face a familiar fork in the road. One path is paved by Ethereum(CRYPTO: ETH), the chain that made many millionaires during the 2021 bull run. Ethereum still commands the deepest liquidity in all of crypto, not to mention a large and enthusiastic base of holders and developers. The other is the express lane championed by Solana(CRYPTO: SOL), purpose-built for speed and cost efficiency, and the favorite of meme coin traders everywhere.
Both roads look promising at first glance, yet the odds of either coin printing millionaires from today’s prices are slimmer than social media hype suggests. Still, relative advantage matters. If one network can compound value even a few percentage points faster, the payoff over a decade could dwarf the other. Let’s compare and contrast their chances.
Even in 2025, Ethereum remains the capital city of crypto development.
It hosts the largest absolute developer base by a wide margin, and it’s the second-largest by market cap, with a cap of $343.3 billion. At the same time, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) holding Ether began trading last summer, and already vacuumed up $3.5 billion in net inflows, with another $450 million arriving from June 1 to June 11 alone.
That steady bid from holders of big amounts of capital gives Ethereum a funding source Solana can only envy for now.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nonetheless, its gas fees and slow transaction times have been difficult problems to solve, even with its latest major update called Pectra, which just launched. While it’s true that fees fell a lot compared to yesteryear, neither transaction volume nor its sum of active wallet addresses moved meaningfully higher. Cheaper usage is welcome, but falling demand hints that Ethereum’s moat is eroding at the edges.
Still, regulation works in Ethereum’s favor for now. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved spot Ether ETFs last year without labeling it a security, which would imply a dramatically higher regulatory compliance burden for the coin as well as probably the projects in its ecosystem.
That tacit blessing lowers existential risk for holders and it directly enables the institutional investors that are now allocating to the asset. The catch when it comes to the coin’s millionaire-maker potential is its valuation.
Turning a $10,000 stake into $1 million would require another 100-fold rise, which is almost certainly not going to happen, as there aren’t any catalysts in sight that would help it along, nor is there enough circulating capital in the financial system, given the coin’s current market cap.
Solana courts investors with a different pitch, as it offers near-instant transaction settlement and fees that are so low that they’re usually negligible.
Crypto developers are voting in favor of that proposition with their feet. Solana was the No. 1 destination for new developers in 2024, and saw its developer count jump 83% year over year. That talent inflow is translating directly into user traction. Solana now handles 81% of all on-chain decentralized exchange (DEX) transactions in the crypto sector, and as many as 64% of non-fungible token (NFT) mints.
Fresh capital catalysts are lining up, too.
Canary Capital filed an S-1 for a spot Solana ETF on May 21. Approval by regulators is far from guaranteed, but even a credible review process could legitimize the asset for advisors who currently cannot touch it. Meanwhile, Solana’s speed, cost profile, and compression tricks make it a natural playground for artificial intelligence (AI) projects in crypto, as well as sensor-rich decentralized physical infrastructure (dePIN) protocols seeking sub-penny fees.
Alas, the upside math for making a millionaire with an investment in Solana is hardly any kinder than for Ethereum.
Its market cap is nearly $90 billion. A tenfold climb over the next 10 years might be believable, but the 100x climb that’d be necessary to turn an investment of $10,000 into $1 million quite simply does not pass the sniff test. Even the most outrageous pipe dreams of the coin’s most hardcore evangelists would not be enough to create growth of that scale, even when considering very long time frames.
That doesn’t mean that Solana or Ethereum are bad investments whatsoever. If your risk tolerance cannot stomach the potential for regulatory surprises, Ethereum remains the steadier grind despite its warts.
On the other hand, if you can handle turbulence and believe that speed, low fees, and a growing population of developers will keep grabbing market share, Solana looks like the better option, even if it won’t make you into a millionaire.
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Alex Carchidi has positions in Ethereum and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
