Solana has eclipsed Ethereum in decentralized exchange activity, recording an extraordinary $29 billion in weekly DEX volume for the week ending November 2, 2025—nearly double Ethereum’s $15.9 billion—anchoring a broader shift in on‑chain trading dynamics driven by throughput and cost advantages; Solana’s hybrid proof‑of‑history/proof‑of‑stake architecture enabled the network to process roughly 543 million transactions that week, sustain daily transaction counts frequently between 30 million and 40 million (peaking at 52 million), and deliver average fees around $0.043, factors that have supported high‑frequency trading, attracted institutional and developer engagement, and contributed to $23 million in app revenue, even as Ethereum’s lower throughput (circa 15 TPS) and higher average fees near $0.43 continue to constrain similar volume growth and leave questions about scalability, fee economics, and long‑term market structure unresolved. The weekend snapshot that showed $5.11 billion on Solana versus $3.8 billion on Ethereum fits into a broader pattern: Solana has now outpaced Ethereum in DEX throughput for ten consecutive months and registered surges in user interest and addresses that market participants interpret as durable demand growth rather than a fleeting arbitrage phenomenon. Observers point to Solana’s sub‑cent fee environment and multi‑tens of thousands TPS capability as structural enablers for market makers and latency‑sensitive strategies, while Ethereum’s higher per‑transaction cost and constrained base‑layer capacity continue to favor batching, rollups, and secondary‑layer workarounds. Measured scrutiny, however, notes that raw volume and transaction counts do not map directly to economic depth or composability; Ethereum still accounts for meaningful protocol revenue and dev activity, and its DEX fees for the referenced week totaled $5.9 million, underscoring persistent on‑chain monetization. Institutional interest, regulatory clarity in jurisdictions such as Hong Kong, and developer migration trends are cited in analyses as compounding forces behind Solana’s momentum, yet countervailing risks remain: network reliability, security tradeoffs inherent in certain scaling architectures, and evolving fee markets could reconfigure comparative advantages. In sum, the weekend flip reflects an important inflection in decentralized trading, but market structure, protocol economics, and regulatory outcomes will determine whether the shift represents a temporary reallocation of volume or a longer‑term reordering of blockchain exchange ecosystems. Additionally, analysts highlighted that 15 million active users were reported during the same period, reinforcing the scale of engagement observed. A notable mainstream financial outlet also ran a front‑page analysis, highlighting growing institutional interest. This surge in trading activity may also be influenced by automated trading bots, which artificially inflate volumes and cater to high-frequency strategies.
