Solana fires warning shot as Ethereum celebrates 9th birthday

Competition between the two major blockchains, Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL), has intensified as Solana surpassed the second-largest chain by market capitalization in weekly fees for the first time.

In the past week, Solana, the fourth largest crypto network by market capitalization, collected $25 million in transaction fees and MEV tips, compared to Ethereum's $21 million, according to Dan Smith, a researcher at Blockworks Research.

MEV refers to the maximum extractable value, a controversial technique that allows frontrunning transactions to make more profitable trades.

According to Smith, Solana outpaces its top rival even when including fee transactions from Ethereum's layer 2 (L2) protocols, which add $2.5 million to the total. L2s are separate blockchains built on top of Ethereum's main chain, designed to help it run more efficiently.

In either case, the heated competition between the two is forcing the Ethereum camp to rethink its strategies and learn from Solana. Generally, Solana, heavily backed by venture capitalists, is considered more centralized than Ethereum – a point that Solana advocates continuously try to refute.

Prominent Ethereum community member and investor Ryan Berckmans recently warned that Solana might outcompete Ethereum in real-world adoption.

"Especially because if even one of these wacky ideas that they are willing to try turns out to be important, maybe they could onboard hundreds of millions of daily actives within a year. Who knows?" Berckmans wrote, stressing that "Ethereum people scoff at it. It's not even on their radar."

Meanwhile, today, Ethereum, co-founded by Vitalik Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer, celebrates its 9th birthday. It went live on July 30th, 2015, and became the top smart contract platform.

However, competition in this market is constantly increasing, as demonstrated by 4-year-old Solana and many other blockchains. Even Bitcoin (BTC), the largest blockchain network by market capitalization, is increasingly exploring projects to deploy more innovative, smart contract-powered solutions on its chain.