Key Takeaways
Why does Solana lead Ethereum in transaction speed?
Solana’s design and fixed low-fee model allow it to process millions of on-chain transactions at lightning speed, outperforming Ethereum.
How is Ethereum closing the gap with Solana?
While Solana dominates in speed, Ethereum roll-ups are boosting scalability.
As blockchain adoption deepens, speed emerges as a defining factor.
Based on this principle, both Ethereum [ETH] and Solana [SOL] devs. have spent 2025 strategizing ways to enhance performance. On paper, Solana clearly leads across key metrics, including finality, fees, and block time.
In fact, Solana presented its advantage in stress tests, showing throughput exceeding 100k TPS. Ethereum, by contrast, focuses on scaling through roll-ups, particularly with the Dencun upgrade, to improve user throughput.
Source: X
That being said, when it comes to transactions, Solana still leads by a big margin.
Its 1H non-voting transactions hit about 3.09 million, roughly 42x more than Ethereum’s. That kind of volume shows users and traders are clearly favoring Solana’s low fees and high throughput for fast on-chain activity.
On the flip side, Ethereum’s L2 ecosystem is scaling fast. Roll-ups like zkSync are handling more of the network’s load, pushing its throughput beyond the base layer. Still, none come close to Solana’s raw speed yet.
Ethereum’s dynamic burn vs. Solana’s fixed fee model
Solana is chasing speed while Ethereum is aiming for scalability.
Notably, this difference defines how both ecosystems are evolving. ETH’s roadmap is more scarcity-driven, built around its deflationary burn model. SOL, on the other hand, runs on a fixed-fee architecture.
In simple words, with average fees sitting near $0.00001 per transaction, Solana’s model prioritizes accessibility. Ethereum’s design trades that off for value capture, relying on congestion and activity to drive fee burns.
Source: EtherScan
As the chart above shows, ETH’s burned fees jumped to around 2,550.
This basically means that more people are using the network again, which is pushing up gas usage and in turn, increasing the amount of ETH being burned. Hence, it’s a key indicator of Ethereum’s on-chain activity.
So, while Solana continues to lead on speed, enabling faster and cheaper transactions, Ethereum is catching up through L2 scaling. This is helping it process more transactions, while keeping its burn mechanism active.
Consequently, in 2025, it’s shaping up to be a clear trade-off. SOL is optimizing for speed, while ETH is optimizing for scarcity and value capture across layers, gradually closing the gap as we move into 2026.