The yr 2025 has emerged as a yr of consolidation, with main layer-1 networks laying the groundwork for the tooling and know-how that may result in higher interoperability, in addition to pushing ahead with real-world monetary use instances.
For Ethereum, that meant a surge in institutional adoption and regular progress on scaling, whereas builders more and more regarded towards interoperability as the important thing problem heading into 2026. For Solana, the main target was on stress-testing the community underneath actual demand and hardening its infrastructure, setting the stage for deeper monetary use instances within the yr forward. Collectively, the 2 networks provide a glimpse into how the business’s main platforms are positioning themselves for the subsequent wave of adoption.
This shift issues as a result of deeper institutional adoption, higher interoperability, and extra real-world monetary use instances might affect long-term demand, yield alternatives, and the sturdiness of returns tied to the belongings constructed on high of those networks.
Ethereum’s 2026 push in direction of interoperability
Ethereum’s momentum in 2025 has been pushed largely by rising institutional adoption, together with from spot ETFs driving as much as the emergence of digital asset treasuries (DATs). Mike Silagadze, the cofounder of ether.fi, one of many largest restaking networks, pointed to ongoing enhancements on the protocol stage as a key enabler, noting that the community is concentrated on “making the Ethereum mainnet layer yet another scalable,” with transactions already “tremendous low cost now and can proceed to get higher.”
He added that progress on layer-two interoperability — “making it simpler to maneuver belongings throughout layer twos and Ethereum” — has been “precisely the best stuff to work on,” alongside broader efforts to advocate for institutional adoption.
That push towards interoperability can also be resonating with builders throughout the Ethereum ecosystem. Alex Cutler, CEO of Dromos Labs, the staff behind Base’s largest decentralized alternate, Aerodrome, stated the subsequent wave of Ethereum upgrades marks a turning level after years of fragmentation.
“In a phrase: unification,” Cutler stated. “We’ve spent 5+ years making issues cheaper and sooner, however in doing fractured UX and fragmented liquidity. That’s about to finish.”
He stated latest developments in interoperability know-how are setting the stage for a serious shift in Ethereum DeFi, predicting that “2026 would be the yr all of those siloed ecosystems come again collectively to create a lightning-fast, cost-efficient and actually interoperable expertise for customers and establishments alike.”
Whereas ETFs have expanded entry to ether, Silagadze stated they fall in need of exposing traders to the financial exercise taking place onchain.
“The ETFs let you might have entry to the asset, however they do not actually offer you any publicity to DeFi or the incomes alternatives,” he stated, arguing that DATs fill that hole. “I believe that is the place the DATs are available… and I believe it actually had a optimistic influence on the value [of ETH], no query.”
ETH fell to $1,472 in April, the bottom this yr, however bounced again $4,832 by August as DATs have been trending. Now ETH sits at roughly $3,000, according to CoinMarketCap.
Looking forward to 2026, Silagadze, who spends his time at ether.fi specializing in neobank options, stated he hopes Ethereum’s subsequent section is outlined much less by speculative cycles and extra by continued scaling paired with tangible, on a regular basis utility. Whereas infrastructure enhancements like cheaper transactions and higher layer-two interoperability lay the groundwork, he believes actual adoption will ultimately come from products that really feel acquainted to mainstream customers however are constructed fully on crypto rails.
“I actually imagine that the intent is, or that the adoption goes to return from quite a lot of these crypto, neobank sort gamers,” he stated, pointing to monetary companies that mix self-custody, yield, and composability in a single consumer expertise.
For Silagadze, that shift requires the ecosystem to maneuver past what he sees as an overemphasis on “playing”-driven exercise and towards functions that resolve actual monetary issues at scale. He emphasised the significance of increasing entry to concrete companies, from tokenized equities to globally accessible banking instruments, arguing that these sorts of merchandise are what’s going to deliver sustained consumer development to Ethereum.
Which means “extra actual world use instances, whether or not it is giving entry to tokenized shares to a broader, international viewers, entry to extra banking companies like crypto neobank, however extra sorts of non-gambling use instances,” he stated.
In his view, neobanking-style platforms might function the bridge between Ethereum’s on-chain infrastructure and the subsequent wave of customers, translating technical progress into on a regular basis monetary utility.
Solana was heads down for 2025 to arrange for 2026
For Solana, after a risky however formative 2024, the community appeared to seek out its footing in 2025. Exercise peaked early within the yr, driven largely by memecoin trading that pushed the community to its limits.
“January was a very loopy month,” stated Lucas Bruder, the CEO of Jito Labs, pointing to surging transaction volumes and unusually excessive income for validators and DeFi protocols. That strain helped harden the community.
In comparison with a yr earlier, Solana is now “tremendous buttery clean,” he stated, with sooner efficiency and meaningfully extra capability. Block house elevated roughly 25% in 2025, enhancing consumer expertise and reducing charges, whereas a contemporary wave of DeFi groups arrived “very energized to construct on Solana.” The consequence, Bruder argued, was a yr during which Solana’s long-promised function as a high-throughput monetary community started to happen.
“2025 was simply loopy, like everybody was utilizing Solana,” he stated, including that it was the primary time the concept of a “decentralized NASDAQ” actually began to materialize.
For Jito, 2025 was outlined by doubling down on infrastructure. The agency targeted on BAM, a new product designed to make transaction sequencing extra clear. The purpose, Bruder stated, was to “unlock new design areas and new markets and new economies” by enhancing how transactions are ordered and priced. Whereas extremely technical, the payoff is simple: “higher functions, higher pricing for customers, and a greater consumer expertise.” That work units the stage for what comes subsequent.
A key inflection level for the community is predicted to reach in 2026 with the rollout of Alpenglow, a long-anticipated improve to Solana’s consensus mechanism. Bruder described Alpenglow as a fundamental simplification of how the community agrees on blocks, one that ought to materially enhance reliability whereas sharply lowering affirmation occasions. Right now, Solana transactions sometimes take 12 to 13 seconds to completely finalize; underneath Alpenglow, Bruder stated, finalization might drop to round one second, which means transactions develop into successfully irreversible nearly instantly.
That shift has important implications for high-stakes monetary exercise, the place quick, deterministic settlement is essential. By tightening finality ensures and smoothing out community coordination, Alpenglow is designed to make Solana higher suited to giant markets, with these enhancements extensively seen as conditions for high-stakes monetary exercise. In Bruder’s view, the improve is much less about incremental efficiency beneficial properties and extra about solidifying Solana’s function because the infrastructure layer for what he repeatedly described as a “actually decentralized NASDAQ.”
Learn extra: Solana Set for Major Overhaul After 98% Votes to Approve Historic ‘Alpenglow’
