Ethereum Closes In on Solana as Weekly DEX Volumes Near $45 Billion
Weekly decentralized exchange volumes on Ethereum and Solana have converged sharply since early 2026, with Solana's volumes falling from record highs to a floor near $44.5 billion in February before continuing to decline. Ethereum has matched or exceeded Solana on some daily metrics for the first time since August 2025, though analysts caution that a sustained reversal has yet to be confirmed, as Solana's memecoin-driven trading boom continues to unwind.
On-chain data for the week of May 4 to 10 shows the two chains running nearly neck and neck on peak daily figures. Ethereum's peak daily DEX volume hit $1.9 billion on May 8; Solana's peak that same day was $1.95 billion. These comparisons reflect peak daily performance rather than full weekly aggregates, and the data does not yet establish a definitive lead for either chain across the full week.
The figures represent a dramatic shift from January 2026, when Solana processed $117 billion in monthly DEX volume compared to Ethereum's $52 billion.
Solana's collapse from that peak has been sharp. Weekly volume on the chain fell from $118.2 billion to roughly $44.5 billion in just three weeks, a 62% drop. The decline did not stop there: by April 2026, Solana's weekly volume had continued falling to approximately $11.49 billion, meaning the full extent of the retreat was considerably steeper than the initial three-week crash alone suggests.
The decline tracks directly to the fading memecoin cycle that had been the primary engine of Solana's volume advantage. At the height of the frenzy, memecoins accounted for as much as 70% of all Solana DEX activity. That share has since dropped to around 20%, with SOL-stablecoin pairs now making up 73% of trading volume on the network.
Solana's daily active addresses fell to 3.3 million, a 12-month low, signaling a broad retreat of retail speculators.
Analyst Adriana Mavrenko, writing for The CC Press, noted that "the distinction between short-term volume fluctuations and durable market shifts requires careful interpretation," adding that Ethereum's recaptured lead still needs several weeks of confirmation before it can be called a structural reversal.
The DEX landscape reflects the scale of what is shifting. Uniswap, which captures roughly 70% of Ethereum's DEX volume, expanded to Solana in October 2025, making it the dominant protocol operating across both ecosystems. On Solana itself, Jupiter holds approximately 95% of the native DEX market, with Raydium also a significant presence. The coexistence of these platforms underscores how the two chains' competitive dynamics now intersect at the protocol level.
Ethereum's recovery is being supported by infrastructure changes rather than a speculative spike. The Pectra protocol upgrade, which launched in late 2025 and continued into early 2026, cut transaction costs on Ethereum's Layer 2 networks (secondary chains built on top of Ethereum that process transactions more cheaply) to between $0.10 and $0.50, down roughly 40%.
That narrows the cost gap with Solana considerably, though Solana's base transaction fee of around $0.00025 still makes it far cheaper for high-frequency retail use.
Separately, the Ethereum Economic Zone, launched in March 2026, is designed to unify liquidity across more than 20 fragmented Layer 2 environments.
Base and Arbitrum, the two largest of those networks, together account for 77% of Ethereum's Layer 2 DeFi TVL. Base alone handles more than 50 million transactions per month.
Phemex Academy's 2026 liquidity comparison put the two chains' contrasting roles plainly: "Ethereum has more liquidity. Solana moves more liquidity."
Ethereum holds roughly $55.6 billion in total DeFi value locked and sits atop a $163 billion stablecoin base. Solana's DeFi TVL sits in the $6 to $10 billion range with a stablecoin base of around $15 billion.
For lending protocols and structured financial products that require deep, stable pools of capital, Ethereum retains a commanding position.
What this means outside the United States
How those liquidity differences translate in practice is most visible in the markets where crypto adoption is growing fastest. India, ranked first globally for crypto adoption with an estimated 119 million users, has seen retail and developer activity concentrate on Ethereum Layer 2s including Base and Arbitrum.
The post-Pectra fee reductions bring those networks closer to cost parity with Solana for everyday transactions, giving Indian users a more competitive choice between the two ecosystems.
In Nigeria, ranked second globally for adoption and with approximately 42% of its population crypto-engaged, crypto use is heavily oriented around stablecoin payments and cross-border transfers rather than trading.
Solana's pivot away from memecoins toward stablecoin infrastructure aligns with that use case. The chain now processes around 35% of all on-chain stablecoin transfers globally by transaction count, making it a relevant rail for remittance-heavy markets across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa recorded DeFi growth of roughly 184% between mid-2025 and mid-2026, with the Ethereum Layer 2 fee reductions cited as a factor in bringing DeFi within reach of users previously priced out of mainnet costs. The region achieved its strongest showing in the Global Crypto Adoption Index, moving from two to four countries in the top 20. Ethiopia, Kenya, and Ghana were among the newly ranked nations.
DEX usage in the region accounts for more than 35% of local crypto trading volume, compared to around 12% in North America, reflecting how decentralized platforms fill gaps left by limited or expensive centralized services.
In Pakistan, where the Crypto Council, established in 2025, is building a formal regulatory framework alongside the in-progress Pakistan Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority, developers choosing between chains for new projects face a more balanced decision than at any point in the last 18 months. Ethereum's deeper institutional liquidity and stablecoin base offer integration potential that Solana's higher raw throughput cannot entirely offset.
Q1 2026 total DEX volume across all chains reached $284.5 billion, down 18% from the prior quarter, underscoring that the broader market has contracted even as competition between the two leading chains has intensified around the question of what comes after memecoins.
Whether the current convergence in daily volumes represents a sustained floor or a temporary plateau before activity rotates elsewhere will depend in large part on what category of use replaces the memecoin cycle.
Both ecosystems are positioning for that answer, and the next few weeks of data will carry more weight than usual.