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Solana and the other large blockchains after Ethereum: usage, fees, market value and ETFs

On 25 October 2026 BNB, XRP and Solana were each worth between 59 and 97 billion dollars, far behind Ethereum. What each network is used for, what a transaction costs, and how ETFs have changed access.

Bitcoin remains the reference asset and Ethereum the main platform for applications, but a group of large blockchains now competes for users, developers and capital. Their market values, usage and fees differ widely, and since late 2025 some of them can be bought through exchange-traded funds in the United States.

Market value first. On 25 October 2026 the whole crypto market was worth about 2.79 trillion dollars, with bitcoin at about 1.62 trillion, or 58 percent, according to 24/7 Wall St. Ether followed at 285.2 billion dollars, with a price near 2,335 dollars. Then came three networks of similar size: BNB, the token of BNB Chain, at 97.1 billion dollars and about 739 dollars; XRP, the token of the XRP Ledger, at 82.1 billion dollars and 1.30 dollars; and SOL, the token of Solana, at 59.5 billion dollars and about 101 dollars.

Market value says little about use, so other measures help. Total value locked, the amount deposited in applications such as lending and trading protocols, was 46.4 billion dollars on Ethereum on 27 October 2026, according to DefiLlama. Far behind came Base, a network built on Ethereum, with 6.1 billion, Solana with 5.7 billion, BNB Chain with 5.6 billion and Tron with 5.4 billion. The XRP Ledger, designed mainly for payments, held about 0.3 billion.

Stablecoins show where digital dollars circulate. On 27 October 2026 Ethereum hosted 142.1 billion dollars of stablecoins, Tron 93.9 billion, Solana 15.4 billion and BNB Chain 13.6 billion, DefiLlama data show. Tron's large share comes mostly from Tether's USDT, widely used for transfers in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Tokenized real-world assets give another view. On the same date Ethereum held about 15.9 billion dollars of them, BNB Chain 6.3 billion and Solana 4.9 billion, according to RWA.xyz, with Stellar and Avalanche next.

Fees are where the networks differ most for ordinary users. On Solana each transaction pays a base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature, or 0.000005 SOL, half of which is burned, plus an optional priority fee paid to validators when the network is busy, according to Solana's documentation. At about 101 dollars per SOL, the base fee is roughly five hundredths of a cent. Network fees paid across a whole chain tell a similar story of low unit costs: in the 30 days to 27 October 2026 users paid about 24.8 million dollars on Solana, 23.8 million on Tron, 15.3 million on Ethereum and 14.4 million on BNB Chain, according to DefiLlama. Ethereum's figure is low because much activity has moved to cheaper networks built on top of it, such as Base.

Each network has its own trade-off. Solana processes transactions on a single fast chain and is popular for trading, payments and consumer applications; its next major upgrade, Alpenglow, which replaces the consensus mechanism and removes validator vote fees, is expected to be activated in late 2026, according to the infrastructure provider Alchemy. BNB Chain is closely tied to the Binance group. Tron is dominated by stablecoin transfers. The XRP Ledger focuses on payments and, more recently, tokenized assets.

ETFs have opened a new channel. The first US spot Solana ETFs began trading on the NYSE in the last week of October 2025, starting with Bitwise's BSOL on 28 October and Grayscale's GSOL the next day, and both stake the SOL they hold; BSOL drew 197 million dollars of net inflows in its first days, The Block reported on 1 November 2025. On 9 October 2026 US Solana ETFs held about 1.73 billion dollars and XRP ETFs about 1.57 billion, according to SoSoValue data reported by Analytics Insight. Net inflows since the start of 2026 were 816.8 million dollars for Solana funds and 635.5 million for XRP funds.

Why it matters: after bitcoin and ether, the crypto market is not a single bet but a set of networks with different uses. Market value, deposits, stablecoin supply and fees each tell part of the story, and they do not always point in the same direction. ETFs make some of these tokens reachable from a brokerage account, while staking yields and network upgrades remain specific to each chain.

Unicorn Club, the members-only club of Unicorn Private for pre-IPO club deals, accepts BTC, ETH, USDT and USDC on ERC-20, the Ethereum token standard. Holders of other tokens, such as SOL, convert them first on an exchange. The guide How to invest in pre-IPO companies with crypto explains the steps. This article is general information, not personalised advice. Investing involves the risk of losing capital.

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