According to a Syndica report, Solana is drawing more new developers than Ethereum and has expanded its share of active builders from 6% in 2020 to 23% by 2026. The shift comes alongside surge-level network usage on Solana, which processed 25.3 billion transactions in Q1 2026 and is now facing closer scrutiny over throughput, reliability and the operational footprint of high-frequency blockchain activity.
Syndica framed the Solana migration as structural rather than cyclical. Ethereum’s share of active developers fell from 82% in 2020 to 31% in 2026, while Solana’s rose sharply over the same period, suggesting a meaningful redistribution of builder attention across the smart-contract landscape.
Low Fees and High Throughput Pull Builders Toward Solana
In calendar 2025, Solana onboarded roughly 4,100 new developers, compared with about 3,700 for Ethereum, according to the report. Syndica also found a broader contributor base on Solana, with the top 1% of contributors producing about 31% of code output, compared with roughly 51% on Ethereum.
Network activity helps explain the shift. Solana processed an estimated 25.3 billion transactions in Q1 2026, which Syndica described as about 125 times Ethereum’s volume for the period, reinforcing the appeal of a chain built around high-volume execution.
The report also highlighted decentralized exchange activity tied to Solana’s low-cost environment. Syndica cited roughly $117 billion in daily DEX trading volume on Solana versus $52 billion on Ethereum, while also referencing performance claims of up to 65,000 transactions per second and average fees below $0.01.
Syndica linked Solana’s builder appeal to its monolithic architecture, where execution, liquidity and tooling remain inside a single environment. That structure gives developers less fragmentation than Ethereum’s rollup-centric model, reducing context switching across networks and execution layers.
Ben Nadareski, CEO and co-founder of Solstice, said activity is moving to where cost and speed align with real-world financial applications. He also noted faster integration of institutional custody and tooling around Solana than Ethereum saw in its earlier years.
MEV, Outages and Energy Questions Shape the Next Test
The report did not present Solana’s growth as risk-free. Maximum Extractable Value was cited by some surveyed founders as a pressing issue, and Syndica noted higher MEV earnings for Solana validators than Ethereum counterparts in 2024, alongside periods of rising transaction fees.
Reliability also remains part of the market debate. Historical network outages continue to weigh on Solana’s reputation, while upcoming work such as Firedancer and Alpenglow is intended to improve finality, throughput and network stability.
From an operational perspective, Solana’s high transaction count shifts the conversation beyond scalability alone. The report does not provide direct energy figures, but the energy and infrastructure implications of high-frequency chains are likely to matter more as validators scale power, cooling and redundancy.
Faster, consumer-oriented load could invite closer scrutiny around systemic resilience, validator operations and third-party custody dependencies, especially if network activity continues to scale.
The developer shift supports the thesis that low latency and low cost can accelerate consumer-facing blockchain applications. At the same time, Solana’s growth places heavier demands on node operators and validators, particularly as MEV dynamics, uptime expectations and throughput pressures intensify.
The next phase will depend on whether Firedancer and Alpenglow materially improve reliability and finality without creating new operational trade-offs. For investors and builders, Solana’s momentum now hinges on execution quality, not just developer growth or transaction volume.