"2021 was the year of Layer 1 competition, and 2024 is the carnival feast of Meme. So, where will the market's main theme go in 2025?"
This question, which sparked heated discussion on X platform, is being clearly revealed by mainstream capital: With the successful legislation of the 'GENIUS Act' and stablecoins officially incorporated into the U.S. sovereign regulatory framework, a new multi-dimensional financial narrative integrating "stablecoins × RWA × ETF × DeFi" is rising forcefully.
In this profound evolution of cross-chain finance, the core focus is no longer on Bitcoin or Meme coins, but on the struggle between Ethereum and Solana for a new and old order. The two public chains have essential differences in technical architecture, compliance strategies, expansion paths, ecosystem construction models, and even value foundations.
Currently, this competition that will determine the future landscape has entered a critical stage where capital is making fierce bets with real money.
Capital Betting Preference: From "BTC Faith" to "Choose Between ETH/SOL"
Unlike previous crypto bull markets driven by macro currency with uniform rises and falls, the 2025 market shows clear structural differentiation. Head projects are no longer rising in sync, and funds are concentrating bets on selected battlefields, with a trend of survival of the fittest.
The most direct signal comes from changes in institutional buying strategies:
On the ETH front: Multiple U.S. listed companies have begun to massively establish Ethereum asset vaults.
- On July 22, GameSquare announced adjusting its digital asset vault authorization to $250 million and adding 8,351 ETH, with a clear goal of "configuring high-quality Ethereum ecosystem assets and achieving stablecoin returns";
- SharpLink Gaming has cumulatively added 19,084 ETH this month, with a total position of 340,000 ETH, market value exceeding $1.2 billion;
- A new wallet address bought over 106,000 ETH worth nearly $400 million through FalconX in the past 4 days;
- The Ether Machine announced completing a backdoor listing with 400,000 ETH and obtaining over $1.5 billion in financing support from top institutions including ConsenSys co-founder, Pantera, Kraken, aiming to become the "largest public ETH output company".
On the SOL front: Purchase scale is equally astonishing and more speculatively explosive.
- Listed company DeFi Development Corp announced adding 141,383 SOL, with total position approaching 1 million;
- SOL treasury company Upexi announced buying 100,000 SOL for $17.7 million, with total position reaching 1.82 million, with floating profits exceeding $58 million;
- According to CoinGecko data, PENGU has reached a market cap of $2.785 billion, surpassing BONK ($2.701 billion), becoming the largest market cap Solana ecosystem Meme coin.
These phenomena indicate that ETH and SOL have become the primary underlying assets for institutional multi-asset allocation. However, their investment logics show significant differences: ETH is used as "on-chain government bonds + high-quality asset underlying + spot ETF access institutional target"; SOL is being crafted into a "high-performance consumer application chain + new Meme economy's main battlefield".
These two betting methods respectively represent expectations for two main lines of the crypto market's future: ETH is the institutionally-taken-over financial engine, SOL is the capital's offensive speculative track.
(Translation continues in the same manner for the rest of the text)As BTC stabilizes at $120,000, ETH sprints towards $4,000, and SOL recently returns above $200, high volatility accompanies high enthusiasm, which itself is a prelude to brewing new narratives and main force position shifting. What we see is not speculative frenzy, but an increasingly shorter feedback loop between "on-chain behavior - price reaction".
This is a model driven by consumption data to trade expectations, which ETH cannot achieve, but SOL has become the paradigm.
Whale Game and Policy Catalysis: Who Can Absorb the Main Force's Repositioning Bullets?
Technical applications determine a public chain's "narrative potential", while funds and policies determine its "trading capacity" - especially after BTC breaks through $120,000 and the market enters the main upward wave, identifying the next stage's "fund convergence zone" is crucial.
On-chain data shows that since Q2 2025, three institutions' "on-chain positioning" behaviors have shown completely different strategies: Grayscale continuously increased ETH holdings from May to July (cumulative 172,000 tokens, about $640 million), clearly used for its spot ETH ETF base position construction; Jump Trading has frequently adjusted positions on Solana chain since June, focusing on BONK, PENGU, and Jupiter, and has accumulated nearly 280,000 SOL through multiple addresses; DeFi Development Corp and Upexi, two listed companies, have continuously announced increasing SOL holdings, forming over a million token positions (total market value near $500 million) and achieving significant floating profits.
This is not a simple "win-lose" bet, but market stratification: ETH is a "structural asset allocation", SOL is a "short-cycle volatility tool".
Policy wind direction differentially boosts "dual-line growth". On July 19, US President Trump formally signed the "GENIUS Act", with the first US stablecoin federal regulatory framework landing, coupled with Coinbase and BlackRock submitting S-1 spot ETH ETF files, making the path of "ETH inclusion in compliance framework" increasingly clear. Meanwhile, Solana team collaborates with exchanges like OKX and Bybit to promote "consumer asset compliant issuance" experiments. For example, OKX launched a Solana chain asset exclusive Launchpad in July and introduced a light KYC mechanism for MEME coin issuance process.
This "two-way compliance" means policy dividends are being distributed differentially according to application scenarios, fund attributes, and risk preferences: ETH continues to absorb traditional capital, while SOL becomes a compliant experimental field for young users and consumption scenarios.
Short-term policy expectations: ETH benefits more obviously, SOL faces fewer restrictions. Although ETH is at the forefront of policy dividends in ETF and RWA aspects, it also faces multiple thresholds from SEC in security attribute determination and staking classification. SOL ecosystem, with less involvement in centralized issuance and complex staking channels, makes its tokens and applications easier to enter the regulatory "gray safety zone". This leads to ETH's growth path being more stable but longer-cycled, while SOL's growth path is steeper and more volatile.
Who Defines the Future? Hedging Allocation, Not Either-Or
From the market path after BTC breaking through $120,000, the difference between ETH and SOL is no longer a linear question of "who replaces whom", but a distributed answer of "who defines the future in what cycle".
ETH is the Medium-to-Long-Term Narrative Protagonist under Structural Support
Under the "GENIUS Act", the path for ETH to enter the financial compliance system is clear. Whether pushing spot ETF or positioning as a "clearing layer" in RWA model, it becomes the "core asset" for Wall Street to configure blockchain assets.
From the positioning logic of institutions like BlackRock and Fidelity, ETH is evolving from "Gas Token" to "basic financial platform", with its valuation anchor shifting from on-chain activity to Treasury yield model and Staking rate. ETH's victory is not through explosion, but through precipitation.
SOL is a Short-Term Detonator in Structural Cracks
Contrary to ETH's stability, SOL has become the main battlefield for fund gaming in high-frequency trading, MEME coin narratives, terminal applications, and native consumer goods (like Saga phone). From BONK to PENGU, to JUP's governance experiment, Solana chain has built a high-liquidity, high-penetration "native narrative market".
Combining on-chain actual performance: SOL's TPS, cost, and terminal response speed continuously lead; SVM ecosystem's independence also helps it escape EVM ecosystem's involution and repeated construction.
More importantly, SOL is one of the few "capable and willing to bear funds with high volatility" narrative low points, becoming the core short-cycle option for capturing "rapid fund rotation response" after BTC launches the main upward wave.
Therefore, this is not a "selection question", but a "cycle game question":
For mid-to-long-term funds optimistic about institutional changes and betting on traditional capital's structured entry, ETH is the first choice. For short-cycle participants hoping to capture fund rotation and narrative explosion opportunities, SOL provides more tension-filled Beta exposure.
Between narrative and system, volatility and precipitation, ETH and SOL may no longer be opposing options, but constitute the optimal combination under a time misalignment.
Who defines the future? Currently, the answer might not be a single project, but a continuous fine-tuning process of this "combination weight".
