We ranked both chains against 43 other layer-1s on how much they are actually used. Ethereum came first, Solana third. Then we took the scoreboard apart — and found that almost none of the margin between them comes from usage at all.
Ethereum scores 94 out of 100 on our usage measure and ranks first among the 45 layer-1 chains we track. Solana scores 82 and ranks third. Stated that way, it reads like a settled argument: one chain is doing substantially more than the other, and the twelve points are the distance between them.
The score is built from two categories. Activity — total value locked, chain fees, DEX volume, deployed applications, stablecoin supply, developer commits and contributors — carries 75% of the weight. Tokenomics — float, issuance and how concentrated the original allocation was — carries the other 25%. Each input is a percentile rank against the other chains in the cohort, so a score is a statement about position, not about size.
Here is what happens when you separate those two categories.
On activity — the thing the score is supposed to measure — they are 95 and 93. Two points, on a percentile scale, across 45 chains. That is not a gap; it is a tie. The twelve points come from somewhere else, and the arithmetic is not subtle:
Eighty-eight percent of the gap is tokenomics, a category carrying a quarter of the weight. That is what happens when one input is a near-tie and the other is a 45-point chasm. So the question stops being "which chain is used more" and becomes a narrower one: what is inside the tokenomics number, and how much should anyone trust it?
Tokenomics has three inputs. Two are computed from live feeds. The third is a judgment, and it is the one that decides the ranking.
| Tokenomics input | ETH | SOL | Spread | Where the underlying number comes from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Float | 96 | 72 | 24 | Computed. CoinGecko circulating ÷ total supply — 100% vs 92.1%. |
| Inflation (inverted) | 86 | 45 | 41 | Reference value. 0.5% vs 5.0% annual issuance. |
| Distribution (inverted) | 95 | 23 | 72 | Reference value. Insider + VC allocation at launch, 15% vs 48%. |
| Tokenomics score | 92 | 47 | 45 | average of the three rows above |
The widest spread in the entire comparison — 72 percentile points — is the distribution row, and it is the one input that is not a live measurement. It is a single figure per chain describing how much of the original supply went to the team, the foundation and early investors: 15% for Ethereum, 48% for Solana.
Token allocation is not a market observation. No chain emits it, no exchange reports it and no feed carries it, because it is not a live fact — it is a reading of launch documents, foundation disclosures and investor commitments, assembled after the event. Every organisation that publishes an allocation figure, ourselves included, is publishing an interpretation of the historical record. That is worth stating plainly, because it changes what the number can be asked to carry.
Our figures for both chains sit in a dated reference set, last reviewed 21 June 2026 and labelled as reference values wherever they appear in this report. They are firm enough to rank on: 15% against 48% is not a close call, and no plausible revision to either figure puts Solana ahead of Ethereum on this input. But they describe a launch structure rather than current activity — and they are carrying 88% of a twelve-point verdict.
The 94-versus-82 result is real, and it is narrower than it looks. The activity half — built from live feeds that update daily — says these two chains are neck and neck. The tokenomics half produces almost the entire margin.
So the ranking resolves to a single question: how much should original allocation and issuance count against a network that is otherwise performing? We weight tokenomics at 25%. Weight it at zero and these two chains finish level. Weight it higher and Ethereum pulls further away. That is a defensible editorial choice rather than a discovered fact, and a reader who weights it differently should expect a different ordering — which is why every input is published separately below rather than folded into a single number.
Four ways to ask "which chain is busier". They do not agree, and the disagreement is the finding.
Rows two and three are the same day on the same chains and they name different winners. Ethereum collects 1.5× the fees; Solana keeps 1.4× the revenue. Fees are what users pay; revenue is what the protocol retains after the burn-and-validator split. Ethereum takes more money in and passes more of it through.
Now divide by what each network costs. Ethereum's market capitalisation is $230.7B; Solana's is $42.8B — a factor of 5.4. Running one day of fees out to a year and dividing by market cap gives 2.31% for Ethereum and 8.10% for Solana: 3.5× more fee activity per dollar of market cap.
We used fees rather than revenue deliberately, because fees are the measure less favourable to Solana. On revenue the same calculation gives 0.43% versus 3.23% — a gap of 7.5×, not 3.5×. Both are defensible; we are reporting the conservative one and disclosing the other so the choice is visible rather than buried.
This is the entire arithmetic behind Solana's higher value-vs-peers rank — 85 to Ethereum's 68. Ethereum does more economic work in absolute terms and it is not close. Solana does more of it per dollar you pay for it, and that is not close either. Both statements are true, from the same day's data, and which one is "the" answer depends on a question the data cannot settle.
There is a third reading in the data that cuts against the bull case for both chains, and it is the one that gets left out of comparisons like this.
We track a measure of whether a network's fundamentals are running above where they stood when its own market cap peaked — a question about the chain against its own history rather than against its peers. Ethereum's peak was 23 August 2025; Solana's was 19 September 2025. On every metric we track, both chains are below those levels. Ethereum: revenue −27.1%, TVL −56.4%, DEX volume −74.6%. Solana: revenue −39.6%, TVL −62.9%, DEX volume −67.7%.
Both chains therefore score zero out of a hundred on fundamentals-versus-own-peak. Not low. Zero — meaning not a single tracked metric has recovered.
What has improved is the price you pay for that activity, because price fell further than usage did. Ethereum is 60.4% below its peak and Solana 70.3%, against fundamental declines that are, on average, smaller. Usage per dollar of market cap is consequently up 10.2% for Ethereum and 16.3% for Solana versus those peaks.
That is the honest version of the "it got cheap" argument, and it is narrower than the way it is usually told. These networks are not doing more than they were a year ago. You are simply paying less for what they do. Whether that is an opportunity or an accurate repricing is not a question this data answers, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
This is a screen, not a forecast. Every score here measures what a network is doing today relative to its peers or its own past. None of them has been validated as a predictor of forward returns, none carries a price target, and a high score is not a recommendation to buy anything.
All figures are a snapshot taken 8 August 2026 at 00:09 UTC and will be stale tomorrow. Fee, revenue and volume figures are single 24-hour readings; one quiet or frantic day moves them materially.
Members get the complete metric-by-metric scorecard, the tokenomics and distribution detail with sourcing notes, the value-versus-own-history read, network technicals, and the same treatment for any two of 198 assets — rebuilt daily. Eludo is in private beta.
Every input, both chains, with the raw reading beside each percentile so you can check our arithmetic rather than take it.
| Metric | Ethereum | Solana | Raw reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Activity (75% weight) | 95 | 93 | composite of the seven rows below |
| Total value locked | 99 | 90 | $41.81B vs $4.72B |
| Chain fees | 98 | 95 | $14.59M vs $9.51M / 24h |
| DEX volume | 94 | 98 | $1.08B vs $1.48B / 24h |
| dApps deployed | 98 | 89 | 1,831 vs 425 |
| Stablecoin supply | 98 | 91 | $147.26B vs $15.56B |
| Developer commits | 81 | 92 | 41 vs 171 in 4 weeks |
| Developer contributors | 99 | 97 | 906 vs 411 |
| Tokenomics (25% weight) | 92 | 47 | composite of the three rows below |
| Float | 96 | 72 | 100% vs 92.1% circulating |
| Inflation (inverted) | 86 | 45 | 0.5% vs 5.0% annual |
| Distribution (inverted) | 95 | 23 | 15% vs 48% insider allocation |
| Final usage score | 94 | 82 | rank 1 and rank 3 of 45 |
Two rows deserve a note. Solana logs 171 developer commits to Ethereum's 41 over four weeks, but Ethereum has 906 contributors to Solana's 411 — a busier small group against a larger distributed one. And Ethereum's 1,831 deployed applications against Solana's 425 is the single widest activity gap in the table, wider than TVL in percentile terms.
The numbers behind section 02, with the caveats attached to each one rather than footnoted.
| Circulating / total supply | 120.68M / 120.68M |
| Float | 100% |
| Annual inflation reference | 0.5% |
| Insider + VC allocation reference | 15% |
| Supply staked | 33% |
| Top-10 holders | 61% |
Reference note: 2014 sale plus foundation allocation; net issuance post-Merge. The 61% top-10 figure is misleading read alone — the staking contract by itself is 51% of it, so concentration excluding staking is closer to 10%. The staking ratio reached an all-time high near 33% in June 2026.
| Circulating / total supply | 582.05M / 631.76M |
| Float | 92.1% |
| Annual inflation reference | 5.0% |
| Insider + VC allocation reference | 48% |
| Supply staked | 67% |
| Top-10 holders | 6.6% |
Reference note: team and VC heavy at launch, disinflating toward a 1.5% terminal rate. Staking at 67% is among the highest of any major layer-1. The 6.6% top-10 reading counts wallet accounts only — staked SOL fragments across many stake accounts, so it understates real concentration and is not comparable to Ethereum's 61%. Two numbers in the same row of the same table, measuring different things.
The full working behind section 04, including the peak dates and the depth of history each reading rests on.
| Reading | Ethereum | Solana |
|---|---|---|
| Market-cap peak within coverage | 2025-08-23 | 2025-09-19 |
| Price vs that peak | −60.4% | −70.3% |
| Revenue vs that peak | −27.1% | −39.6% |
| DEX volume vs that peak | −74.6% | −67.7% |
| TVL vs that peak | −56.4% | −62.9% |
| Share of fundamentals above peak | 0 / 100 | 0 / 100 |
| Usage per $ vs peak | +10.2% | +16.3% |
| History depth · confidence | 397d · high | 397d · high |
"Peak" here means the highest market cap within our 397 days of stored history — not the all-time high. Both chains traded higher before this window opened, so these declines are measured from a peak that is itself below the true top. The comparison is honest between the two chains because both use the same 397-day window; it would not be honest against a chart drawn from all-time highs.
| Property | Ethereum | Solana |
|---|---|---|
| Block time | 12s | 0.4s |
| Finality | ~13 min | ~13s |
| Realistic throughput | 38 TPS | 1,400 TPS |
| Nakamoto coefficient reference | 2 | 10 |
| Average transaction fee | $4.99 | n/a |
| Volume / market cap | 3.4% | 3.5% |
Throughput figures are observed, not the marketing maximum each project quotes. The Nakamoto coefficient is a periodic snapshot from public trackers rather than a live feed; Ethereum's 2 reflects staking-pool concentration rather than client or node diversity, and is the harshest defensible reading of that metric. None of these inputs feed the score — they are context, not evidence.
Every comparison has edges. Ours are set out here rather than left for the reader to find.
| Solana daily active addresses and transaction count | Not reported on a consistent basis across chains. Our active-address and transaction series cover Ethereum and its layer-2s. Consequence: Solana's value ranking is computed on three inputs (revenue, DEX volume, TVL) where Ethereum's uses five. Read the two value scores as indicative of the same idea rather than as strictly like-for-like. |
| Whale concentration on native layer-1s | The top-10 holder figures are wallet-level and mean materially different things on each chain, as section 06 sets out. We do not publish a cross-chain concentration ranking, because the underlying figures are not comparable and averaging them would manufacture a precision that does not exist. |
| Builder momentum and divergence | Not applicable to base layers. The measure derives from 7-day protocol TVL growth and is meaningful for DeFi protocol tokens — roughly 25 of the 250 assets we track. Null is the correct output for a layer-1 here, not a missing value. |
| Insider allocation, inflation, Nakamoto coefficient | Reference values, last reviewed 21 June 2026 and labelled as such throughout. These describe launch structure rather than live activity — see section 02, which sets out precisely how much of the ranking rests on them and what happens if you weight them differently. |
| Fee, revenue and DEX figures | Single 24-hour readings taken at 00:09 UTC on 8 August 2026. Percentile ranks rarely move on one day's data, but the raw dollar figures should be read as one day, not a run rate. |