Solana’s rapidly expanding decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem is outperforming Ethereum’s in both growth and revenue. Despite this, a report from Franklin Templeton reveals that Solana’s tokens are trading at a lower value.

“Solana DeFi valuation multiples trade on average lower than their Ethereum counterparts despite significantly higher growth profiles, highlighting an apparent valuation asymmetry,” the report stated.

Franklin Templeton conducted a comparison between five leading Ethereum projects (LDO, AAVE, ENA, MKR, and UNI) and five of Solana’s top protocols (JTO, JUP, KMNO, MNDE, and RAY). The results showed a remarkable 2400% median growth in fees for Solana year-over-year, against Ethereum projects, which had a median growth of just 150%.

The growth trends coincided with a year of substantial advancements for Solana, where memecoin traders significantly boosted the network’s decentralized exchanges in 2024. By January 2025, Solana’s DEXes surpassed the total volume of Ethereum’s entire ecosystem.

“DeFi may be entering an era of Solana Virtual Machine Dominance, shifting away from the historical reign of EVM-based DeFi,” the report explained.

While this indicates a shift in activity to Layer 2 blockchains, which Franklin Templeton asserts is demonstrating the effectiveness of Ethereum’s scaling methods, the asset value disparity may not endure.

“As Solana keeps proving its worth as a decentralized computing solution, the market may soon align the valuations of key Solana DeFi protocols with those of comparable Ethereum protocols.”