From a newly published market perspective titled Solana against Ethereum decentralized Finance, the world investment company Franklin Templeton highlights the increasingly competitive landscape in decentralized finance (DEFI). According to the document, “protocols DEFI quickly became fundamental primitives within cryptographic economies”, as these blockchain-based applications operate self-executing intelligent contracts to provide financial services without counting on centralized intermediaries.
DEFI: Solana vs. Ethereum
Franklin Templeton’s analysis highlights the striking growth of Defi, based in Solana, which contrasts with the historic market leader Ethereum. Despite Solid Solana’s solid transaction capacities and the growing adoption of users, the document notes how “Ethereum has historically served as a leader of all DEFIs, allowing the highest level of activity and offering the deepest liquidity among all chain ecosystems”. However, this dominant position seems to be subjected to a challenge: research shows that on January 31, 2025, “The volume of Solana Dex exceeds both volumes Dex Ethereum as well as the volumes of all Dexs based on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).”
Franklin Templeton underlines both the extent of the DEFI sector and the pace to which Solana catches up. As of January 31, 2025, “DEFI managed to find a strong adjustment of the product market, facilitating up to $ 600 billion in monthly negotiation volume and securing more than $ 120 billion in total locked value (TVL).”
On the Ethereum side, protocols such as Lido (LDO), Aave (Aave), Maker (MKR) and UNISWAP (UNI) remain firmly in their market positions, generating tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in annualized costs over a period of 90 days. According to Franklin Templeton:
“Ethereum DEFI protocol costs (90D annualized, $ in millions)
- LDO: $ 249 in the fourth quarter 2024, 35% in annual shift
- Aave: $ 169 in the fourth quarter of 2024, 312% growth in annual shift
- MKR: $ 67 in the fourth trime
- UNI: $ 315 in the fourth quarter 2024, 105% growth in annual shift »
Meanwhile, the main candidates of Solana – Jito (JTO), Jupiter (JUP), Kamino (KMNO), Marinade (MNDE) and Raydium (Ray) – have declared rapidly weak growth and multiple evaluation. In the words of the company,
“The Solana DEFI protocol costs (90D annualized, $ in millions)
- JTO: $ 423 in the fourth quarter 2024, 12405% growth in annual shift
- JUP: $ 216 in the fourth quarter 2024, 2268% in annual shift
- KMNO: $ 32 in the fourth quarter 2024, 1587% growth in annual shift
- Ray: $ 395 in the fourth quarter of 2024, 2624% in annual shift »
Despite these revealing figures, Franklin Templeton’s data show that Solana’s protocols continue to negotiate for multiple evaluation based on lower costs compared to comparable Ethereum Defi projects. The research indicates “an apparent asymmetry of evaluation between the two ecosystems”, even after having considered the potential dilution of token.
One of the focal points of the report is the transformative effect of broadband chains like Solana. Many observers believed once the advantage of the first engine of Ethereum in Defi was insurmountable, but “the recent rise in Solana and other broadband channels has considerably disputed the cutting edge of Ethereum for the first time since the creation of Ethereum.”
Although Ethereum continues to develop via layer 2 blockchains (L2S), the growing prominence of the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) environment suggests that DEFI could enter what Franklin Templeton surfers an “era of SVM domination”. Meanwhile, Ethereum sees an upsurge in “the modular infrastructure aligned by the EVM”, reflecting a modular approach aimed at extending financial activity to L2 channels and new high speed layer 1 networks.
At the time of the press, Sol exchanged $ 147.
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