Solana vs Cardano: which altcoin will best the other, and can either ‘kill’ Ethereum

Cardano and Solana, the fourth and sixth-biggest blockchains by market cap respectively, boast of rising altcoins and smart contract capabilities. What’s more, both have been called “Ethereum killers” as they are doing their best to draw in users frustrated with Ethereum’s gas fees.

Here is the question on investors’ minds: which one will win? Crypto researcher and reviewer Max Maher recently tackled this very mystery using some metrics and came to a surprising conclusion.

Cardano vs Solana

Using several metrics, Maher compared Cardano and Solana to understand which alt coin could be the better investment. Naturally, Cardano seemed to emerge as the winner due to its larger size. But coming to a few specific metrics, Maher said,

“And I was surprised to see that Solana has quite the chance here, looking strictly at the data.”

How did this come about? For both altcoins, Maher studied the total wallet addresses with more than $2 and then took up the same metric a month later. In that time, Cardano saw a percentage gain of 10.92%. However, Solana’s increase was 22.59%. This was despite the fact that Cardano’s total wallet addresses (with more than $2) were around double that of Solana’s.

Maher called Cardano’s gain “massive” but said that Solana’s data point was “mind-blowing.”

He explained,

“This means, if Solana kept at the prevailing rate of 22.5% – which is huge – but if they were to keep at that rate, they would pass Cardano in total user size, total wallet addresses, in about six months. And that really highlights the growth here and what these percentage gains can do.”

For reference, Maher also charted out the data.

Furthermore, Maher also showed that Solana’s volume traded on the network (30 day average) of roughly $2.2 billion was much higher than Cardano’s volume.

So, could Solana and Cardano’s growth threaten Ethereum any time soon? For his part, Maher said,

“And really, I believe, if Ethereum loses its crown in the smart contract race…it will happen in the next year to two years.”

Finally, Maher admitted that he liked both projects “very much.”

But keep in mind…

No blockchain or altcoin is perfect, and both Cardano and Solana have endured their fair share of flaws and FUD.

In September, as previously reported, Solana’s mainnet-beta saw “intermittent instability.” The reason for the outage was a spike in the transaction load which also began to cause forks.

Cardano hasn’t exactly enjoyed a smooth ride either. Known for being the third-biggest blockchain by market cap, Cardano recently conceded its rank to Binance Coin [BNB]. At press time, the price of ADA was $2.14. Meanwhile, SOL was $192.96.