How ETH and SOL Pushed Crypto Forward in 2024

In many ways, 2024 sold the story of bitcoin's value to the world as the asset surpassed $100K and launched an epic revenge run. This year in crypto wasn't just about BTC though, 2024 was a huge year for both the Solana and Ethereum communities.

And while, as always, there was a decent amount of infighting between the two premiere smart contract platforms at various points, this was a year that showcased the distinct strengths of each community in building experiences that ultimately brought more attention to the crypto space while setting up the industry for a legendary 2025.

Today, we're digging into some of the top moments that embodied the strengths of Ethereum and Solana in 2024. Here are the top 3 biggest trends on Ethereum and Solana in 2024👇

ETH's Top Trends

1️⃣ ETH's Builders Fought for the Future

Ethereum's builders fought hard for a future for crypto and DeFi in 2024, leading the way with tough rhetoric and targeted lawsuits against overzealous regulators, aiming to push back on a years-long onslaught against crypto companies.

With entities like Uniswap, Consensys, and Coinbase going on the legal offensive, early Ethereum leaders aimed to stand up for the values of the crypto industry as they stood against Gary Gensler while bankrolling pro-crypto political leaders and aiming to remake the political landscape.

In 2024, crypto's powerhouses won key battles and earned key political capital that will ensure the industry's values aren't so easily trounced.

2️⃣ Stablecoin Growth Showed Crypto's Value

Stablecoins caught significant traction in Ethereum’s ecosystem this year. Ethena launched its stablecoin, USDe, and minted just under $6B within 1 year. Other major stablecoins also experienced growth, with USDC nearly doubling its supply and USDT increasing its supply by over 50%.

This amount of growth shows the growing adoption of stablecoins as a reliable financial tool for a store of value. Institutions like BlackRock are now entering the space, with their BUIDL fund backing Ethena’s USDtb stablecoin. With BlackRock’s credibility, more companies may soon explore the potential of stablecoins for reducing day-to-day transaction costs.

3️⃣ Ethereum Talked Responsible Scaling

Disappointing price performance for ETH pushed the community to take a long, hard look at its perceived strengths and weaknesses. While most of the conversations are still ongoing, we were able to see impassioned conversation defending and critiquing the state of Ethereum's scaling roadmap when it comes to execution capabilities.

We hosted both sides of these conversations in Bankless, hearing from Max Resnick on the scaling woes, while Justin Drake showcased a roadmap-aligned path forward in Beam Chain.

It wasn't all talk, however. The Dencun hard fork addressed transaction costs on L2s by introducing blobs into the mix, which allowed L2s to store large amounts of data on Ethereum mainnet at a lower cost. This upgrade enabled L2s to reduce transaction fees, making them more accessible to users who were previously priced out due to the high transaction costs.

SOL's Top Trends

1️⃣ Memecoins Brought the Masses

The memecoin craze drew millions of users to the Solana chain, with many chasing the dream of hitting the next 1000x. Pump.fun emerged as a key player in this meme coin madness, launching over 5M tokens in 2024 and handling around 50% of the DEX transactions on Solana in the second half of the year. This is a crazy statistic when you take into account the $990B in volume that came from DEXs on Solana. 

The memecoin pump wasn't always glamorous. Memecoins rugged, insiders cashed out and minor celebrities did their best to extract value from retail traders. Pump.fun also found some limits of the platform, as its short-lived live-streaming feature hosted some pretty terrible user behavior... But despite these setbacks, Pump.fun remains one of Solana’s flagship projects. If the meme coin craze continues into 2025, Solana could see even more users swarm to its chain than in 2024.

2️⃣ Developers Flocked to Solana

Solana sentiment surged in 2024, attracting new market participants, but also new developers willing to stake their careers on the chain.

The 2024 Electric Capital Developer Report showed some interesting statistics but the main highlight from it was Solana’s rapid growth in the developer community. Solana ranked second by developer share in every continent, trailing only Ethereum. While Ethereum still leads in total developer count, Solana brought more new developers than any other chain this year, with around 1,000 more new developers than Ethereum. This trend signals a wave of innovation within the Solana ecosystem and could lead to another hot year like 2024.

3️⃣ Institutional Interest Bubbled Up

SOL's price story has been a pretty convincing one over the past two years as it has risen over 1,700%. This growth, alongside the launch of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, has sparked speculation about when a Solana ETF might launch.

Grayscale has already filed a request to convert its Solana trust into a spot ETF. With Grayscale successfully converting its Bitcoin and Ethereum trusts earlier this year, it seems like a matter of when not if. A Solana ETF would be a major milestone for the ecosystem. It would provide large institutions and retail investors an easy way to gain exposure to Solana, helping to shift the chain’s perception in the crypto community from a meme coin chain to a trusted ecosystem used by millions.

🎉 New Year, New Narratives

In 2024, both ecosystems experienced distinct trends that reinforced their narratives and contributed to the broader narrative of crypto eating TradFi.

Solana solidified its reputation as a go-to chain for retail, driven by a meme coin craze that introduced many users to the crypto space for the first time. Ethereum, on the other hand, maintained its position as the backbone of DeFi, emphasizing stability and institutional adoption while its community championed the values of decentralization within the industry and on the political stage.

2025 promises to be a massive year for the space as the stateside anti-crypto army loses power in national politics and regulatory clarity becomes a prime directive. With Bitcoin's more straightforward value opp already clearly communicated to global investors, the time is coming for the Ethereum and Solana communities to showcase how internet money can make the world go 'round in a whole new way.