Hao Yang: Hoping for an Appropriate Market Valuation
Hao Yang: ETH and SOL are not Binary Oppositions
ETH Remains the Most Tested and Robust Blockchain
ETH and SOL Can Both Prosper
Hao Yang, the Director of Financial Products at Bybit, believes that ETH is still the most decentralized, tested, and technologically advanced project in history.
Advertisement – Continue reading below
He stated, “I hope Ethereum can receive an appropriate valuation, especially considering the increasing demand for NFTs and decentralized financial services, which are expected to generate over $4 billion in revenue on the Ethereum blockchain this year.”
Hao Yang, Director of Financial Products at Bybit
Hao Yang believes that ever since Solana (SOL) started outperforming Ethereum, speculators have been declaring the death of Ethereum on Twitter/X. In fact, Solana has attracted a large amount of capital inflow this year, transferring capital from Ethereum and increasing its daily active users to 30 million, while Ethereum only has 1 million at the time of writing.
However, the Total Value Locked (TVL) – the total amount of capital in smart contracts on the blockchain – is $53.4 billion on Ethereum, compared to only $4.4 billion on Solana. This reflects different use cases: Solana is chosen for high-speed, low-cost transactions, while institutional investors still choose Ethereum.
From the perspective of retail users, Solana is leading the cryptocurrency field in terms of smooth applications and user-friendly interfaces, driving its popularity.
This is evident from the daily active user indicators – Solana’s year-on-year growth is 126%, while Ethereum’s growth is only 24% during the same period. This increased interest and capital have propelled the rapid development of Solana, resulting in exciting new products such as the art/collectibles market DRiP, the exchange aggregator Jupiter, and numerous meme coins. In contrast, Ethereum has been struggling to find reasons for retail users to return.
But this is a false binary.
Hao Yang said, “Personally, I like to invest in both ETH and SOL because they are optimized for capturing different markets. Solana excels for the reasons mentioned above, but ETH also has many advantages that make it favorable for institutions, large transactions, and renowned artwork.”
Firstly, it is the longest-standing smart contract platform among any, so investors putting 57% of their smart contract capital on Ethereum is the best vote of confidence,
while the proportion using Solana is only 4.64%. Of course, this also needs to take into account that Ethereum has been running since 2015, while Solana was launched in 2020. Secondly, Ethereum has never experienced a shutdown, while Solana has encountered hours of downtime and struggled to handle the surge in transaction volume this year, resulting in some trades being stuck, delayed, or even two weeks long.
If you are an institutional investor and want to deploy your products, would you choose ETH or SOL? Of course, instant trading may be important for traders, but institutional investors should not be concerned about slightly longer settlement times, as they are accustomed to settlement times that can take up to two days in traditional finance.
Despite the extended settlement times, these investors benefit from the broader distribution and proven security of the network. They can even settle tokenized money market funds on a 24/7, 365-day basis based on customer trends. In fact, institutions such as BlackRock and Fidelity are already using Ethereum due to its high stability, sending a signal to the market that Ethereum is the preferred destination for on-chain business by institutional investors.
On the other hand, the growth of on-chain art is also becoming a comprehensive movement, and future art historians will point out that “NFT was born at that time.” Emerging artists like XCOPY, Matt DeLaurier, and Jack Butcher are selling 1/1 artworks on-chain for huge prices, all priced in ETH.
It is clear that ETH is the choice of financial giants, institutional funds, and art collectors, while Solana is the darling of the retail market. They can thrive together. There is space in the world for both Rolex and Casio, and it doesn’t have to be black or white. Even though ETH may currently lag behind Bitcoin and Solana, it does have a unique narrative and market positioning that will lead it to a prosperous future.
Bybit
ETH
Hao Yang
SOL
Further Reading
Hong Kong SFC Warns: Bybit is Operating Without a License in Hong Kong, Offering Multiple Cryptocurrency Trading Products
Deepfake Tool OnlyFake Can Generate Fake Passports for Just $15, Claims to Have Passed KYC on Multiple Exchanges