Perspective: The Ethereum Killer narrative has collapsed, the competition between ETH and SOL has ended.

Author: Haotian; Source: X, @tmel0211

I found an interesting phenomenon while browsing the English blogger circle: ETH Maxis and SOL Maxis are always at odds. The ETH side mocks SOL for its low stablecoin adoption rate, while the SOL side ridicules Tom Lee for his low awareness and only being able to shill. It's so interesting.

But actually, I have a point of view: The competitive relationship between ETH and SOL has long ended with the collapse of the "Ethereum Killer" narrative. Why?

1. Ethereum's ability to maintain its position as the leader in the stablecoin market is the result of multiple factors, including its comprehensive DeFi ecosystem and decentralized security technology foundation. Additionally, the leading advantages of mainstream stablecoins like USDC and USDT have accumulated over years of market expansion, making it difficult to change this path dependency in the short term.

But this does not mean that Solana will completely lose opportunities in the stablecoin sector. With the arrival of Stablecoin Summer, the issuance of stablecoins will trend towards a multi-chain environment, and a large number of new stablecoins like USDe, USD1, PYUDS, USDG, etc. will emerge, establishing their own main camps during the expansion of DeFi economic activities.

Solana, with its first-mover advantage accumulated in new narrative scenarios such as PayFi, AI Agent, and HFT high-frequency trading, is not weak in the subsequent incremental breakthroughs in stablecoins. Therefore, it is not solid to determine who is stronger or weaker based solely on stablecoin market share.

2. Previously, new layer 1s like Solana, Avalanche, and BNBChain all focused on the narrative of being Ethereum Killers, competing with Ethereum through high performance and TPS arms races. However, everyone now understands that a TPS show without an effective ecosystem support cannot stand firm, thus the narrative framework of high TPS has already become desensitized.

The new narrative logic is, who can drive the large-scale adoption of Wall Street's structure. Ethereum, with its advantages in decentralization and security architecture, will be the preferred choice for institutional asset allocation, but Solana is taking a different path, first attracting incremental users from Generation Z through the MEME culture, and then optimizing performance with upgrades like Alpenglow consensus and Firedancer client upgrades, which can enhance transaction speed to within 150ms.

In this way, there may emerge innovative financial business models similar to Hyperliquid in the Solana ecosystem, thereby bridging the gap between the DeFi ecosystem and Ethereum. This targeted service for Wall Street financial product demands will obviously become an advantage for Solana to overtake quickly, much faster than Ethereum's implementation of L1 performance enhancement strategies.

3) It is evident that the competitive dimensions of Ethereum and Solana have completely misaligned. Ethereum will lock in its advantage as a global financial settlement layer to continuously consolidate its position, while Solana will anchor its vision as the on-chain Nasdaq, relying on performance advantages and blue-blood genes to constantly expand the integration scenarios with TradFi.

To some extent, ETH Maxi will still see the glow of decentralized and secure geekism, while SOL Maxi will become the new leader in breaking the deadlock in the Internet Capital Market (ICM).

Therefore, ETH Maxi and SOL Maxi do not need to be in direct opposition; rather, they exist in a complementary relationship, much like Android and iOS, where the former is open and inclusive but deeply rooted, while the latter is closed and efficient but refined in experience.

The market will ultimately prove that the coexistence and advancement of SOL and ETH are merely expanding the boundaries of Crypto. No matter which side you stand on, the outcome will not differ. So I am a Crypto Maxi!