As Solana's on chain activity continues to accelerate, a question is increasingly surfacing among investors. Can Solana eventually be valued alongside networks like Ethereum , or is the gap structural rather than temporary?
During a recent interview with TheStreet Roundtable at Solana Breakpoint, that question was put directly to Danny Nelson, a research analyst at Bitwise Asset Management, who pointed first to usage rather than price targets.
"If you look at the level of activity that's happening on Solana, it's hard to say exactly how to value these networks," he said.
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What is easier to measure is economic activity. Solana has emerged as a leader in decentralized exchange usage, consistently posting higher DEX volumes than Ethereum.
"If you look at DEX volumes, Solana's beating Ethereum in DEX volumes," Nelson said. "It's not beating Ethereum in stablecoins , but it's number two, maybe number three already."
That activity reflects what many users experience firsthand. Speed and cost matter. Compared with Ethereum's higher fees and slower settlement, Solana's environment makes it easier to build applications that feel usable rather than experimental.
That's not to say that Ethereum is overvalued or Solana is undervalued," Nelson said.
Instead, the question is where future growth will concentrate. If payments and tokenized assets become core blockchain use cases, infrastructure that supports high throughput at low cost becomes increasingly attractive.
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"If payments and tokenization are really going to take off, then Solana is going to be a prime place for all that activity to happen," Nelson explained.
Nelson believes that tokenization will be the technology that takes Solana to new highs.
"The biggest value add for Solana is going to be tokenization," he said.
Today, Ethereum still dominates real world asset issuance, including tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other financial instruments.
Institutions, he argued, care less about brand and more about execution.
"From the perspective of institutions, what it's really going to come down to is things like stock trading and asset management," Nelson said.
If those activities move on chain , they will require an environment that is both fast and inexpensive.
For Solana, the path to higher valuations hinges on whether tokenization migrates from proof of concept to production scale, and which networks are ready when it does.
This story was originally published by TheStreet on Jan 16, 2026, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
