EVM Won. How Solana’s Biggest Strength Became Its Biggest Weakness

The vast majority of major altcoins have broken out of this year's sideways range. Solana, however, is sitting about 10% behind the broader crypto market.

The main reason SOL has failed to keep up is BlackRock's decision to pass on launching an ETF for this particular altcoin. The Solana network isn't compatible with Ethereum, while most other altcoin blockchains run on the EVM.

According to Cryptomus analysts, the arrival of Monad and Sei V2 in 2026 — both supporting Parallel EVM — strips Solana of its main competitive edge: transaction speed. DeFiLlama data suggests crypto investors are drawing the same conclusion. Ethereum's TVL is 12 times higher than the $5.7 billion currently locked on the Solana blockchain.

Sei's developers argue that the continued growth of stablecoins will make blockchain incompatibility an even bigger headache, leading to liquidity fragmentation across ecosystems. Bridges won't fix that problem either — trust in them has taken a real hit after a string of recent exploits.

All of this could leave Solana on the sidelines of the stablecoin mainstream, ceding ground to Tron. That blockchain already occasionally beats Ethereum in terms of the volume of USDT tokens issued on it.