The Ether ecosystem has recently become the main source of the coin's price growth thanks to the explosive growth of the DeFi and NFT sectors. However, as of November 2021, the altcoin has no visible competitors, and many potential "ETH killers" did not compete and dropped out of the race for the decentralized finance sector. Despite this, the Solana token is able to compete with ether due to the speed and cost of transactions, as well as the good pace of development of the blockchain.
All these processes are taking place against the backdrop of the formation of ETH as a full-fledged second power in the cryptocurrency market. Following the status, the main altcoin loses many of the advantages of its previous status, such as low transactions and network availability for all categories of users. In theory, this means that part of the ETH 1.0 audience will be looking for an alternative, and an excellent way out of the situation would be to switch to SOL. However, first of all, let us consider in what way the broadcast has become not as accessible as before.
A clear example of the growth of the ETH network was the statement of the Director of BlockFi, who announced that the company will no longer provide services for the free withdrawal of the main altcoin. The reason for this decision is the significantly increased transaction costs. In other words, fees on the Ethereum network have skyrocketed, and even the London update failed to address the issue. Now, for the first withdrawal of funds from the platform, you will have to pay a commission of 0.015 ETH, which is $64. A similar situation occurs on many decentralized platforms based on ether.
Ultimately, this will lead to an outflow of audience from ETH-based projects and the search for more profitable alternatives. The developers will follow the preferences of the audience, and it is likely that the main altcoin will lose part of its audience. I note right away that there is no need to worry since the increased deflationary component of the coin will allow it to attract much more institutional investment.
Altcoin Solana can become an effective alternative to ETH, since it consumes a minimum amount of energy, and, accordingly, the fees on the network are much lower. An illustrative example was provided by the project developers, according to which one transaction on the altcoin network consumes less energy than 2 Google searches.
For example, at the moment, ETH consumes 644 million Joules, while SOL is only 1,836 Joules. The situation is likely to change with the transition to the ETH 2.0 version, but Solana's competitiveness is striking and as of November 2021, this altcoin is a profitable alternative to ETH.
To top it off, the architecture of the Solana project allows smart contracts to process many more transactions in a shorter time frame and at a lower cost. In the near future, we can expect a change in the ratio of the number of projects and the cost of blocked funds in DeFi projects based on ETH and SOL.
Analyzing the possibility of such a trend, it is worth emphasizing that as ether has surpassed bitcoin in terms of growth, so Solana can surpass ether. Technically, the potential of the coin is in no way inferior to ETH.
