In the early 2020s, Solana surged due to the crypto boom and cheap money, becoming closely associated with meme coins among the general public. However, this did not prevent it from becoming one of the few networks appealing not only to speculators but also to major corporations.
ForkLog explored how this fast blockchain has positioned itself as a contender for infrastructure in payments, tokenized assets, and the agency economy, demonstrating its resilience in a new wave of technological development.
A Boom During the Pandemic
Launched in 2020, Solana entered the market with promises of high performance and speed, much like many projects of that wave. Its dizzying success during the pandemic and unprecedented monetary stimulus helped the network gain popularity and liquidity.
At that time, the stars aligned perfectly: an influx of cheap money, a massive increase in new users during lockdowns, and rapid industry development. The project team managed to deliver a quality product with a rapidly growing ecosystem. There were issues, of course; the most notable became a running meme about the blockchain not functioning on weekends. But these were the costs of innovation and the price of Solana's insane popularity during that period.
In its first two years, the network's Total Value Locked (TVL) grew exponentially, along with the price of its native token, SOL.
TVL of Solana from its launch on March 16, 2020, to December 31, 2021. Source: DefiLlama.Solana's early history resembles the song "The House of the Rising Sun," most famously performed by The Animals. The song's protagonist eerily reflects the archetype of the retail speculator from the Solana community in the early 2020s. By the end of the song, much like Sam Bankman-Fried, he laments his sinful life and offers cautionary advice to the mothers of young, possibly underage, traders. ForkLog has discussed how brothels and casinos emerged around innovations.
The fast and user-friendly infrastructure, well-optimized for mobile devices and focused not only on technical speed but also on user cognition speed, allowed Solana's products to quickly gain traction. Speculators and retail traders are eager and heavily reliant on the dopamine-cortisol needle, especially when offered:
- Convenience and speed of applications;
- Simplicity in interacting with the base network;
- Quick market responses and high chances of random windfalls;
- A dynamic media environment and an active community around the ecosystem.
When these factors align and complement each other, short-term success is guaranteed. But what further distinguishes Solana from other large and stable networks like Cardano and Ethereum?
Solana vs. Ethereum
The differences between Solana and Ethereum have long transcended ideology; they are rooted in fundamental architectural distinctions.
Solana was originally designed as a high-performance blockchain for mass load: theoretically, the network can handle around 65,000 transactions per second (TPS) and maintain thousands of TPS under peak demand.
Ethereum, at its core, is still limited to dozens of transactions per second. This leads to significant user experience differences: transaction fees on Solana are typically fractions of a cent, while during periods of high activity, Ethereum's Layer 1 transaction costs can range from several to tens of dollars.
Infographic: ForkLog.Solana vs. Cardano
Cardano has always developed as an academic project, emphasizing research, formal verification, and cautious implementation of updates. This approach has given the network a reputation as a technologically sound blockchain but has simultaneously slowed ecosystem development. As a result, Cardano significantly lags behind its competitors in TVL, developer activity, and user numbers.
In contrast, Solana appears to be its complete opposite. The network's ecosystem develops rapidly and aggressively: new projects like Pump.fun, Jupiter, or Tensor can go from launch to scaling in just a few months.
High user activity—both from individuals and automated systems—ensures Solana generates significantly larger transaction volumes and fee revenues.
Technologically, the network relies on Rust—a complex yet mature and popular programming language with a broad developer base. Cardano uses the more niche and academic Haskell, complicating the influx of new engineers.
Infographic: ForkLog.Solana's team has managed to outpace Cardano and Ethereum in the race for liquidity and users. A key factor has been its refusal to replicate the strategies and tactics of more established and stable players.
At least during the early 2020s, Solana has managed to carve out its own identity in the industry. Many other competitors and "Ethereum killers" have become stuck in the narratives of their "victims" and, unwittingly, have killed their new superblockchains instead of Ethereum.
But what does this success look like from the perspective of 2026? What is its nature, and what is the practical utility of everything that occurred during the network's early years?
Art projects, meme coins, and other retail madness surrounding Solana occupied a prominent place in the project's storytelling and narrative. At a glance, it might seem that there is nothing more to this blockchain. However, a closer look at the project's partnerships and successful integrations reveals that the factories of memes and toxic speculation are merely a byproduct of effective marketing inflated by the cheap money of the early 2020s.
Social and Technical Superiority
Cardano has always been elitist, which has influenced the strategic mistakes made by its team and revealed several missed opportunities. The team attempted to adapt to the demands of speculators, mistakenly interpreting the requests and aspirations of mass users as trends, but this did not work. They failed to reconcile an academic approach with the expectations of speculators.
Cardano has not achieved significant success in the corporate sector. Even Charles Hoskinson's visit to meet Donald Trump yielded no results: while he gladly welcomes guests and their generous gifts, this does not guarantee patronage. Disappointed, Hoskinson had no choice but to criticize the esteemed president.
Turning to Ethereum, it is worth noting that the corporate results of "ultrasound money" are quite good, largely due to its early launch in 2015 and a systematic approach to development. Among its real partnerships and integrations are many names that speak for themselves: from IBM and Microsoft to international financial institutions.
By the time Solana emerged, Ethereum had already become too large to be toppled by new heroes of the digital revolution. Overall, it has rightfully secured a leading position among multifunctional networks. The project benefited from the economic conditions of the early 2020s, and numerous Layer 2 solutions and an influx of new users into the industry pumped liquidity into the main network. Even the transition from PoW to PoS was sold and executed relatively smoothly.
However, with the departure of helicopter money, user loyalty and the interest of metacapitalists—who, unlike Ethereum's talented founder, care only about profit—have diminished.
Socially and communicatively, Ethereum is much stronger than Cardano, and the project's community has a different nature compared to Solana. Yet, technically, both networks have successfully differentiated themselves across a range of parameters. In its first two years, Solana underwent massive stress tests that overloaded the network and exposed security threats in a 24/7 mode.
Big Names and Serious Money
Solana has confirmed integrations with corporations in payment infrastructure, cloud computing, telecom, and asset management. The project team has learned not just to sign memorandums but to integrate into the operational processes of companies with high regulatory and financial status. Major players choose this blockchain not for marketing and storytelling but for its technology and optimized transaction economics.
In September 2023, Visa announced an expansion of its pilot program for settlements with acquiring partners in USDC via the Solana blockchain, in addition to the already connected Ethereum. By 2025, the company released a statement about its official integration. Another example of such application is the Solana Pay plugin for Shopify.
Big Tech also quickly became interested in the project. In 2023, Google Cloud became a validator for the network and added Solana data to its BigQuery analytics product for developers. By 2026, this integration expanded into the agency economy with the Pay.sh service based on Coinbase's x402 protocol, allowing agents to request sources and pay for each call without creating an account or paying a subscription.
In 2025, Franklin Templeton added support for Solana (making it the eighth blockchain added to the fund's infrastructure) to its tokenized fund FOBXX. Later, the fund increased its focus on the project, and it was included in the ETF application list alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum.
PayPal launched the PYUSD stablecoin on Solana in 2024, in addition to Ethereum, citing speed and transaction cost as motivating factors. These are areas where Solana clearly outperforms the second-largest cryptocurrency network.
The integrations mentioned can be considered among the most interesting or illustrative of the project's actual development dynamics beyond marketing noise and speculation.
In its six years of existence, Solana has managed to distinguish itself from Ethereum "killers" through an alternative approach to network architecture. It has also significantly outperformed Cardano socially and strategically. However, by 2026, Solana faces not a technological but a conceptual challenge.
The network has successfully addressed issues of speed, scalability, and liquidity, but now it confronts an identity crisis, finding itself at the same stage that Ethereum and Cardano have been navigating for the past few years.
The problem lies not so much in technology as in narrative. In the crypto industry, it is the narrative that shapes project perception, determines capital inflow, influences regulatory attitudes, and affects the long-term sustainability of the ecosystem. Here, the project faces three challenges.
First, Solana has simultaneously become an infrastructure for major market participants and a space for highly speculative activity. Within one network coexist corporate projects, payment infrastructure, institutional integrations, and a vast segment of meme coins, art tokens, and overtly toxic schemes. This includes not only high-risk assets but also projects directly associated with manipulation, wash trading, and fraud.
Second, the question arises: can the network maintain unified liquidity and an open architecture without devolving into a realm dominated by speculative chaos? This is particularly sensitive for Solana, as its ecosystem has historically been built around the idea of a unified space without user and capital fragmentation.
Third, reputational pressure is increasing. The more the network is used by corporations, funds, and regulated companies, the sharper the question of compliance with AML requirements and the overall "cleanliness" of the ecosystem becomes. For institutional players, it is critical to understand whether they can operate in a network where, alongside legitimate products, schemes for creating artificial volume and aggressive speculative models thrive.
Against this backdrop, Solana is gradually approaching the most challenging stage of its development—the need to define its own identity. What will the network be in the long term: a universal blockchain "for everything," a corporate high-performance infrastructure, or a decentralized trading environment with minimal restrictions?
These models do not easily coexist, and attempting to hold them simultaneously inevitably creates internal contradictions. Scandals surrounding tokens like TRUMP have only made this issue more visible to the broader audience. However, the contradictions themselves emerged much earlier.
Despite all its achievements, Solana is still not just "good for anything"—it is an excellent ecosystem for opaque and high-risk projects.
Can the network restructure and transform in the next round under the era of artificial intelligence in less than favorable macroeconomic conditions? A significant window of opportunity for Solana and the entire crypto space lies in the economy of machines and integration into networked autonomous AI systems. The project is well-positioned for this due to its technical parameters and partnerships with corporations.
The social aspect, the community, is no longer as active or homogeneous as it was in the early 2020s. But high-efficiency machines and algorithms have long replaced traders. The same is happening in the network's use cases that do not pertain to trading and speculation.
The next generations of AI systems will gain a greater degree of autonomy, providing many blockchains, including Solana, with immense growth potential.
As seen from the overview of integrations and interactions with corporations, Solana has confirmed utility beyond the crypto sandbox. Successful integrations with payment giants, Big Tech, and other players provide a fundamental basis for further scaling of the ecosystem.
Among the entire digital finance industry, which continues to transform into the true digital economy of the future, Solana today stands out as one of the projects overturning the pessimistic thesis that "crypto is already over / finished / not what it used to be."
Thanks to the integration of Pay.sh and its compatibility with x402, it is one of the few blockchains ready to unpack the agency economy, which is already emerging as a separate hypertrend at the intersection of digital finance, AI, and distributed computing.