Solana launched in 2020, with the aim of overtaking the top cryptocurrencies and becoming the go-to blockchain. Of all the 10,000-plus cryptocurrencies in existence, Solana is one of the few that seems to have the potential to dethrone Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) – but they will not go down without a fight.
Ethereum has proved time and again that it is a secure blockchain, while Solana has experienced growing pains when managing its security. However, Ethereum is not faultless, and faster transaction speeds and lower fees make Solana a favourable alternative.
What about Solana price prediction 2025? How much will Solana be worth at the end of 2025? This article will show you the answer.
What is Solana?
Anatoly Yakovenko, who is based in San Francisco, designed the Solana blockchain as an Ethereum alternative. Many of the same tasks can be built on his platform, whether that is programming smart contracts, creating decentralised applications (dApps) or minting non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Solana does have one difference, however: it was created with scalability at its core, through its quicker transaction speeds and lower fees. The blockchain also uses Rust, a different programming language from Ethereum. Rust is used by technology giants including Facebook and Amazon, giving Solana access to a wider community of developers.
The advantages of Solana gained attention this year, and the price of its native cryptocurrency (SOL) surged. Many are calling it an “Ethereum killer,” as it has the potential to threaten the top two cryptocurrencies.
Can SOL take on the big two?
While its market capitalisation is far behind, Solana still has advantages over Ether and Bitcoin. The Solana blockchain uses a proof-of-history (PoH) and proof-of-stake (PoS) model. PoS requires a validator to verify a transaction, which is determined by the number of coins they hold.
Solana has implemented PoH into its verification process. PoH creates timestamps that reflect the amount of SOL held and when it was held. The combination of the two protocols has given Solana much faster transaction speeds compared to the top two cryptos.
Both ETH and BTC use a proof-of-work (PoW) system. This means validators have to complete complex puzzles to create a new block. PoW is designed to take a long time, as the puzzles need to be complicated to stop a flurry of new blocks from flooding the system.
The fastest blockchain on the block?
While Ethereum can handle roughly 13 transactions per second (TPS) and Bitcoin can manage about five TPS, Solana is staggeringly higher, with 50,000 TPS. Solana’s network speed is even quicker than the global payment processor Visa, which has approximately 24,000 TPS.
Their slowness is causing massive growing pains for Bitcoin and Ethereum that will halt their scalability. For BTC to remain the go-to transactional currency, it is going to need to manage lots of people using the network, and therefore many more TPS.
Similarly, for Ethereum to attract a wider user base to use its applications and smart contracts, it will need to be able process high transaction speeds. The current low speeds are also unappealing as they drive up network fees. Ethereum gas fees, which are needed to complete a transaction, are priced by supply and demand. The more transactions on the network, the higher the gas fees.
As Solana can handle more transactions, its fees are much lower. Gas prices on Ethereum can range dramatically, from $20 to more than $100. Solana’s transaction fees are priced at $0.00025, which in itself is a compelling reason to ditch Ethereum and migrate to this alternative.
Ethereum 2.0
Ethereum has noted its scalability problems and is attempting to fix them by switching its consensus mechanism. Next year, Ethereum will migrate to PoS in an attempt to drive down gas fees and increase transaction speeds.
This should give it higher processing power than Bitcoin, but Ethereum will still struggle to catch up to Solana, which does not need to wait for confirmation across the network. PoH forms a record that proves the details of an event, while traditional PoS needs validators to communicate with each other.
Despite this, Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, says the blockchain could reach 100,000 TPS after the upgrade. But this remains to be seen.
Security threats
Although Solana has logistical advantages over the big two cryptocurrency blockchains, it is nowhere near as trusted.
Bitcoin’s blockchain has never been successfully hacked or maliciously attacked. Programs built on Ethereum have had some security hiccups, but it was never the fault of the actual blockchain. As Solana is a newcomer, it has not yet earned that trust. More importantly, it has proved vulnerable to malicious attacks on its blockchain.
In September, Solana went down for 17 hours after an attack that flooded the network with bots. This was too much for the blockchain to handle, and the attack left it unable to create new blocks.
Solana’s network going down was not an isolated incident. In December 2021, a bug was found in the Solana Protocol Library – the documents that guide Solana projects. This bug could have been exploited to steal money from Solana projects at a rate of $27m an hour.
Even more recently, the blockchain suffered an outage on 1 June 2022 after a bug stopped it from producing new blocks. The blockchain was offline for four hours and it subsequently saw a 13% slide in its price, according to CoinDesk. But the network implemented a new upgrade this month, which was primarily designed to stop outages.
While the blockchain may be scalable in theory, in practice it is a different story. So before it is to take on the big two, it needs to put these outages behind itself and prove it can be a trusted network.
Solana price prediction 2025: How much will Solana be worth at the end of 2025?
SOL has a strong future, according to most Solana price predictions. However, at the moment, it is unlikely to threaten either ETH or BTC.
AMB Crypto writer Sahana Venugopal recently noted that the altcoin’s trading volume has been surpassing Bitcoin’s as SOL has been able to capitalise on the recent losses of the big two. It has also been able to compete with Ethereum’s NFT market.
She wrote: “Solana has an ace up its own sleeve. To be specific, this is Solana’s growing influence in the NFT space as it tries to outpace Ethereum.”
A newly released performance report by Messari acknowledged the growth in Solana’s NFT markets. However it confirmed Solana’s difficult year as well, saying: “Solana also experienced network performance challenges and declines in financial performance.”
Solana’s dominance of the NFT market was proved when it generated more NFT sales than Ethereum during a 24-hour period. This was mainly down to the release of the Trippin’ Ape Tribe collection, but shows the blockchain has potential to produce highly demanded NFTs.
Nigel Frith, an equities trader at AskTraders, argues that Solana has room for growth, but will not dethrone Ethereum. He said: “I believe Ethereum 2.0 will continue to dominate the current crypto markets as the most widely used blockchain.
“That doesn’t mean blockchains like Solana will not thrive as well. Solana already provides a great solution: it has a lower transaction fees than ETH can offer currently, as well as the fastest transaction speeds.”
This verdict that Solana can grow, but not as quickly as Ether or Bitcoin, is largely reflected by experts making a SOL coin price prediction for 2025.
WalletInvestor’s SOL coin price prediction is pessimistic and says it will stoop to $0.49 by the end of 2025. This is much lower than ETH’s $7,084 and BTC’s $84,336.
CoinPriceForecast predicts that SOL will only reach $55.19. Its Solana price prediction for 2025 is lower than Ether’s $1,532 and Bitcoin’s $30,821.
A more bullish outlook is given by Gov.capital, whose SOL price prediction for 2025 estimates it will surpass $1,000. However, this is not as high as the 2025 forecasted price of Ether that is above $10,000, or the prediction for Bitcoin that is higher than $150,000.
The Solana coin price prediction for 2025 from DigitalCoinPrice is less optimistic, forecasting that the so-called “Ethereum killer” will only reach $65.97. This is nowhere near the forecasts for the top two: DigitalCoinPrice predicts BTC will climb to $39,708 and it expects ETH to climb past the $2,000 mark.
Hope this article can provide you with a better understanding about Solana price prediction 2025. How much will Solana be worth at the end of 2025? You must've found the answer now.
