For some months now, there have been many doubts concerning the “stability” of the Ethereum blockchain.
It isn’t about doubts associated to the technical functioning of this blockchain, which exhibits no indicators of getting issues from this standpoint, however associated to the precise use by the customers.
Ethereum actually was not created as a monetary asset, like Bitcoin, however as a community of computer systems that executes good contracts in a decentralized, trustless, and uncensorable method. Its purpose has at all times been to present a service to customers, slightly than to supply a monetary asset.
Within the Ethereum white paper in 2014 Vitalik Buterin wrote:
“What Ethereum intends to supply is a blockchain with a completely built-in Turing-complete programming language that can be utilized to create “contracts” which can be utilized to encode arbitrary state transition capabilities, permitting customers to create any of the techniques described above, in addition to many others that we’ve got not but imagined, just by writing the logic in a number of traces of code”.
Ethereum Blockchain in disaster?
Regardless of this, over time the true nice success of Ethereum has been to allow the launch of many tokens on the crypto markets, ranging from the ICO increase of 2018 and passing by means of the memecoin increase of 2021.
For instance, SHIB of Shiba Inu was launched as a token on Ethereum.
Ranging from 2023, nonetheless, Ethereum started to face competitors from Solana from this standpoint, a lot in order that now it’s primarily on Solana that new tokens are launched.
The actual fact is that on Solana it’s so a lot easier, cheaper, and quicker to launch a token that it has made this exercise accessible to virtually everybody. Ethereum, then again, has fallen a bit behind on this regard.
The image of this handover was the launch of Donald Trump’s official token, on January 18 of this 12 months, launched particularly on the Solana blockchain and never on that of Ethereum.
Regardless of this, the variety of common every day transactions recorded on the Ethereum blockchain doesn’t look like in decline.
Throughout 2021, this quantity had settled properly above the a million mark, and in 2023 it had settled round this stage.
Whereas Solana was stealing the position of chief of memecoins from Ethereum, between 2024 and 2025, the variety of common every day transactions recorded on the latter blockchain rose first above 1.1 million, after which additionally above 1.2 million.
Not even with the downturn of 2025 has it returned to 1,000,000, so from a technical standpoint, the Ethereum blockchain doesn’t appear to be in a bear market in any respect.
The issue of DeFi
The actual downside is of a purely monetary nature.
For instance, the TVL of DeFi on Ethereum on the finish of 2024 reached a peak of 77 billion {dollars}, which is considerably decrease than the all-time excessive of 109 billion in November 2021.
Moreover, throughout 2025 it fell under 50 billion, which is a stage in step with that of twelve months in the past.
Though these numbers don’t recommend in any respect that there’s a actual disaster underway, they do denote a little bit of struggling.
The dominance of Ethereum within the TVL DeFi continues to be very excessive (52%), however Solana is rising (7%).
The actual fact is that on the finish of 2024 Solana recorded its all-time excessive for TVL DeFi, reaching almost 12 billion {dollars} for the primary time in historical past. The height in 2021, nonetheless, had stopped at 10 billion.
Nevertheless, even for Solana, 2025 noticed a powerful decline, right down to the present 6.6 billion {dollars}, which is nonetheless a determine considerably greater than that of twelve months in the past.
In different phrases, it’s evident that Solana has nibbled away a little bit of Ethereum’s TVL share.
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The DEX
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The place the competitors from Solana is larger is within the DEX, or the decentralized trade.
The actual fact is that with considerably decrease charges, Solana takes away from Ethereum all of the customers who commerce small quantities on DEX, and this has additionally led to the overtaking.
Taking as a reference solely the full every day buying and selling volumes on DEX, these on Ethereum had a peak of seven.6 billion {dollars} in 2024, with a median on the finish of the 12 months of about 3 billion.
As an alternative, these on Solana skilled an unbelievable spike to over 35 billion {dollars} the day after the launch of Trump’s memecoin, and a median on the finish of 2024 shut to five billion.
Analyzing the month-to-month volumes, on DEX on Ethereum in December 2024, they exceeded 92 billion {dollars}, decreased to 86 in January 2025, and to 64 in March. It’s value noting that the all-time excessive peak was 117 billion {dollars} in Could 2021.
As an alternative, for Solana in December 2024, they had been 120 billion {dollars}, rising to 258 in January, and returning to 52 in March. It’s noteworthy that in 2021 there weren’t but important volumes on the DEX on Solana, but additionally that in March the volumes on the DEX on Ethereum returned to surpass these on Solana.
The memecoin
All that is certainly closely influenced by the increase of memecoins, which often seem within the crypto markets solely to vanish till their subsequent reappearance.
If one analyzes the usage of the Ethereum blockchain making an allowance for these memecoin booms, the present scenario doesn’t appear good in any respect. Nevertheless, if one ignores the memecoin booms, a transparent dominance over Solana and all different blockchains continues to be noticeable.
In different phrases, in periods when there isn’t any memecoin increase, Solana doesn’t surpass Ethereum in virtually any metric, aside from the variety of transactions recorded every day on its blockchain.
Nevertheless, when a brand new increase of memecoins arrives, Solana explodes, whereas Ethereum is now considerably at a standstill.
The value of ETH: past the Ethereum blockchain
Clearly the worth of ETH is affected, additionally as a result of in earlier years it had been very positively affected by the increase in utilization linked particularly to the increase of memecoins.
It’s as if in recent times an unlimited speculative bubble inflated on the worth of ETH, generated by way of memecoins on Ethereum, after which as soon as this bubble burst, it didn’t kind once more as a result of final 12 months it shifted to Solana.
It ought to be remembered that the charges on the Ethereum blockchain are paid with its native cryptocurrency, ETH, so the extra the Ethereum blockchain is used, the extra the market demand for ETH will increase.
It is very important emphasize that since September 2022, when Ethereum transitioned from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, the circulating provide of ETH has stopped growing, remaining considerably steady at round 120 million ETH.
