Ethereum vs Solana: Returns, SOL/ETH Ratio, Fees, Supply, Staking and Outages Compared

Risk: volatility and the biggest drops

Annualized volatility of daily returns since June 2021 was about 97% for SOL and 70% for ETH. The gap has narrowed: over the last 365 days it was 64% vs 61%, and in 2026 so far 63% vs 61%. The two move together more than many holders expect, with a 0.88 correlation of daily returns over the last year (0.73 since 2021), so owning both diversifies less than it seems.

Peak-to-trough daily closes on Coinbase. SOL fell further than ETH in both bear markets since it listed. A −96% drop needs a 27-fold rise just to get back to even. For every ETH bear market since 2016 and how long recovery took, see the ETH drawdown history.

DCA: $100 a month into ETH vs SOL

Buying $100 on the first day of every month, valued at the October 18, 2026 close.

SOL came out well ahead for plans started in 2021–2023, because those buys included SOL’s 2022 lows. Plans started in 2024 or 2025 are behind in both coins and further behind in SOL. ETH-only plans can be modelled in more detail in the ETH DCA simulator.

Ethereum vs Solana: network comparison

Every row is dated and sourced. Usage numbers move daily, so treat them as a snapshot, not a ranking. All Ethereum figures are for the main chain (layer 1) unless stated; activity on Ethereum layer 2 networks such as Base and Arbitrum is not included.

“Network transaction fees” is DefiLlama’s chain-level fee series (what users paid to the base network, not to apps). Transactions-per-second figures are our own short samples and are not comparable one-to-one: a large share of Solana transactions are automated trading and arbitrage, and much of Ethereum’s activity has moved to layer 2s.

Fees and speed: Solana vs Ethereum

Solana charges a fixed base fee of 5,000 lamports (0.000005 SOL) per signature, about $0.0005 at $103.99, plus an optional priority fee set by the sender. Half of the base fee is burned and half goes to the block producer; priority fees go entirely to the validator (Solana fee docs, SIMD-0096). Fees are charged whether a transaction succeeds or fails.

Ethereum fees float with demand under EIP-1559. Over the 1,024 blocks to about 4 PM ET on October 19, 2026, the median base fee was 0.14 gwei and the median priority tip 0.05 gwei, so a plain 21,000-gas ETH transfer cost about 0.000004 ETH, roughly 1 cent. Swaps and other contract calls use several times more gas. Check the live number on our ETH gas tracker. Much Ethereum activity now runs on layer 2 networks, where the median transaction usually costs under one cent (22 of 23 tracked networks over the 30 days to October 16, growthepie); see Ethereum layer 2 fees compared.

On speed, Ethereum produces a block every 12 seconds and finalizes after two 32-slot epochs (about 12.8 minutes). Solana switched to its Alpenglow consensus on mainnet on October 21, 2026 (slot 459,653,000, about 13:54 UTC), and Anza says transactions now become final in about 150 milliseconds, down from about 12.8 seconds under Tower BFT. Ethereum’s own next upgrade, Glamsterdam, has no mainnet date yet; see the Ethereum upgrades timeline.

Supply and inflation: SOL vs ETH

• ETH: 122,143,785 ETH on October 19, 2026 (ultrasound.money), growing about 0.86% a year at the last 30 days’ pace. About 1.08 million ETH a year is issued to stakers; with base fees near 0.1–0.4 gwei only about 29,000 ETH a year is being burned. ETH was net deflationary for parts of 2022–24 but not since April 2024; details on our Ethereum supply page.
• SOL: 636,090,258 SOL total supply, of which 589,493,710 is circulating (Solana getSupply, October 19, 2026). The network inflation rate was 3.60% a year in epoch 1062. Solana’s schedule started at 8% a year, falls 15% a year, and stops at a permanent 1.5%. Only half of each base fee is burned: even if every fee paid in the last 30 days had been burned, it would have offset only about 0.5 percentage points a year, so net SOL supply growth is close to the inflation rate.
• Neither has a hard cap. SOL dilutes unstaked holders about four times faster than ETH right now. Staking offsets most of that for SOL stakers, which is why so much SOL is staked.

Staking: higher headline yield, higher issuance

About 437.9 million SOL was staked on October 19, 2026 (68.8% of total supply, from getVoteAccounts), compared with 43.76 million ETH (35.8% of supply, ultrasound.money). Solana’s docs say staking returns depend on the inflation rate, how much SOL is staked, and each validator’s uptime and commission. Dividing the 3.60% inflation rate by the 68.8% staked share gives about 5.2% a year before commission; Grayscale’s GSOL reported 4.23% gross staking rewards on October 16, 2026. ETH staking pays about 2.6% (2.51% issuance plus about 0.09% from MEV and tips, ultrasound.money).

The headline gap is smaller than it looks: an unstaked SOL holder is diluted by about 3.6% a year, an unstaked ETH holder by about 0.9%. Measured against each network’s own supply growth, our estimate puts SOL staking about 1.6 points a year ahead before commission, and ETH staking about 1.7 points ahead. Compare ETH staking routes in Lido vs Rocket Pool vs Coinbase staking.

Reliability: Solana outages vs Ethereum

Solana has stopped producing blocks seven times since 2020, each time needing a coordinated validator restart (Helius). The most recent was February 6, 2024, about five hours, caused by an infinite recompile loop in the program cache (Anza’s report). We found no full halt since then, and the Solana status page showed 100% uptime over the 90 days to October 19, 2026.

Ethereum has not stopped producing blocks since the Merge in September 2022. Its most serious incident was on May 11–12, 2023, when the chain stopped finalizing for 4 and then 9 epochs because some consensus clients were overloaded by old attestations; blocks kept being produced and it recovered without intervention (Prysm post-mortem). Ethereum runs several independent client implementations, which limits the damage a single client bug can do; Solana is adding client diversity with Firedancer, though Firedancer was not supported during the Alpenglow switch.

ETFs: spot SOL vs spot ETH funds

Bitwise’s BSOL became the first U.S. spot Solana ETP on October 28, 2025, and was built to stake all of its SOL. Farside tracks seven U.S. spot SOL funds, all listed with a staking fee; their combined net inflows were about $1.55 billion to October 16, 2026. U.S. spot ETH funds have taken in about $12.97 billion since July 23, 2024, and six of the 11 now stake; compare them on our spot Ethereum ETFs page.

Fees, staking fees and flows (US$, to October 16, 2026) as listed by Farside Investors. GSOL details from Grayscale (October 16, 2026): 1,775,994 SOL held, 100% staked, 4.23% gross staking rewards. Other SOL funds may exist that Farside does not track.

Which should a holder choose?

This is not advice, but the data points to a few honest conclusions:

• SOL has been the higher-beta bet. It rose more from the 2022 lows and fell more in both downturns. If you can’t sit through a 90%+ drop, size SOL smaller than ETH.
• ETH is the bigger, more settled network. About 4.8× SOL’s market cap, most of the stablecoins and DeFi collateral, lower inflation, several clients and no halts since the Merge. Its main-chain fees are higher, and part of its activity (and fee income) has moved to layer 2s.
• Solana is the cheaper, faster single chain. It leads on DEX volume and base-layer fees paid, and since the Alpenglow switch on October 21, 2026 its finality is about 150 milliseconds (Anza). Its record includes seven full outages and a 96% price crash.
• Stake if you hold SOL. At 3.6% a year inflation, unstaked SOL loses share of the network much faster than unstaked ETH.
• Owning both diversifies less than you think. Daily returns were 0.88 correlated over the last year. If you hold both, rebalance on a schedule instead of chasing whichever went up last.

Risks to keep in mind

• Price risk: both have lost 75–96% in past downturns, and past returns don’t predict future ones.
• Upgrade risk: Solana swapped its consensus engine on a live network on October 21, 2026 (Alpenglow), and the new protocol has a short mainnet track record; Rotor is still to come; Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade is in testnet rollout with no mainnet date.
• Concentration risk: activity numbers such as DEX volume can be inflated by bots and short-lived memecoin trading, and can fall quickly.
• Custody and scam risk apply to both. Read Is Ethereum a safe investment? and hardware wallet vs exchange before buying either.

Download the data

License: The tables, chart and CSV on this page are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Share and adapt them for any purpose, including commercially, with credit (for example “GrowYourEthereum, Ethereum vs Solana Data, CC BY 4.0”) and a link to the license. Raw closes come from Coinbase Exchange’s public API; Coinbase’s terms apply to that raw feed. Third-party figures in the network table belong to their sources.

GrowYourEthereum. (2026). Ethereum vs Solana Data (Coinbase daily closes) [Data set]. Updated October 19, 2026. https://growyourethereum.com/data/ethereum-vs-solana. Licensed CC BY 4.0.

<a href="https://growyourethereum.com/data/ethereum-vs-solana">Ethereum vs Solana Data (Coinbase daily closes)</a> by GrowYourEthereum, licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a>.

@misc{growyourethereum_ethereum_vs_solana_2026,
  author       = {{GrowYourEthereum}},
  title        = {Ethereum vs Solana Data (Coinbase daily closes)},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://growyourethereum.com/data/ethereum-vs-solana}},
  note         = {Data set, updated October 19, 2026. CC BY 4.0}
}

Methodology

• Prices: Coinbase Exchange daily candles (UTC days) for ETH-USD, SOL-USD and SOL-ETH, fetched October 19, 2026, with the incomplete October 19 candle dropped. Comparisons start June 17, 2021, SOL-USD’s first day on Coinbase, and end with the October 18, 2026 close (1,950 days, no gaps).
• Returns use daily closes only. Volatility is the standard deviation of daily log returns × √365; correlation uses the same returns. Drawdowns are peak-to-trough daily closes. The ratio is SOL-USD ÷ ETH-USD; Coinbase’s SOL-ETH market (from November 3, 2021) matches it to within 0.1% on a typical day.
• Network data: DefiLlama’s public API (chain TVL, stablecoins by chain, DEX volume, chain fees) read October 19, 2026, using complete UTC days to October 18; ultrasound.money’s API for ETH supply, issuance, burn and staking; Solana’s public mainnet RPC (getSupply, getInflationRate, getVoteAccounts, getRecentPerformanceSamples) and an Ethereum public RPC (eth_feeHistory, block reads) on October 19, 2026 around 16:00 ET.
• The ~5.2% SOL staking figure is our approximation (inflation rate ÷ staked share of total supply), before validator commission and excluding priority fees and MEV tips; actual rewards vary by validator.
• Prices only: no fees, spreads, staking rewards or taxes. Other exchanges and aggregators differ slightly; CoinGecko lists SOL’s all-time high as $293.31 (January 19, 2025, intraday) versus a $261.99 record daily close on Coinbase.

Ethereum vs Solana FAQ

Sources

• Coinbase Exchange API: product candles (ETH-USD, SOL-USD, SOL-ETH daily data)
• DefiLlama: TVL by chain
• DefiLlama: Ethereum chain overview
• DefiLlama: Solana chain overview
• DefiLlama: stablecoins by chain
• DefiLlama: DEX volume by chain
• DefiLlama: fees by chain
• DefiLlama API documentation
• ultrasound.money: ETH supply, issuance, burn and staking dashboard
• Solana RPC docs: getSupply
• Solana RPC docs: getInflationRate
• Solana RPC docs: getVoteAccounts
• Solana docs: fee structure (5,000 lamports per signature, 50% burned)
• Solana: staking and inflation schedule (8% start, −15% a year, 1.5% floor)
• Solana Foundation: Alpenglow upgrade (mainnet epoch 1064, Oct 21, 2026)
• Anza: Alpenglow
• Anza: “Alpenglow is Live on Solana” (Oct 21, 2026)
• Solana / Anza: Feb 6, 2024 mainnet beta outage report
• Helius: A complete history of Solana outages
• Solana status page
• Prysm (Offchain Labs): mainnet post-mortems incl. May 2023 finality incident
• ethereum.org: Proof-of-stake (slots, epochs, finality)
• ethereum.org: Gas and fees (EIP-1559 base-fee burn)
• ethereum.org: Nodes and clients
• CoinGecko: Ethereum
• CoinGecko: Solana
• Farside Investors: Solana ETF flows
• Farside Investors: Ethereum ETF flows (all data)
• Bitwise: BSOL launch, first U.S. spot Solana ETP (Oct 27, 2025)
• Grayscale: Solana Staking ETF (GSOL)
• Morgan Stanley: launch of MSSE and MSOL (Jul 28, 2026)