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 circumstances.
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 beneath actual demand and hardening its infrastructure, setting the stage for deeper monetary use circumstances within the yr forward. Collectively, the 2 networks supply a glimpse into how the business’s main platforms are positioning themselves for the following wave of adoption.
This shift issues as a result of deeper institutional adoption, higher interoperability, and extra real-world monetary use circumstances may 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 the 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 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 fitting 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 group behind Base’s largest decentralized trade, Aerodrome, mentioned the following wave of Ethereum upgrades marks a turning level after years of fragmentation.
“In a phrase: unification,” Cutler mentioned. “We’ve spent 5+ years making issues cheaper and quicker, however in doing fractured UX and fragmented liquidity. That’s about to finish.”
He mentioned latest developments in interoperability know-how are setting the stage for a significant 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 really interoperable expertise for customers and establishments alike.”
Whereas ETFs have expanded entry to ether, Silagadze mentioned they fall wanting exposing buyers to the financial exercise taking place onchain.
“The ETFs let you will have entry to the asset, however they do not actually provide you with any publicity to DeFi or the incomes alternatives,” he mentioned, arguing that DATs fill that hole. “I feel that is the place the DATs are available… and I feel it actually had a constructive influence on the worth [of ETH], no query.”
ETH fell to $1,472 in April, the bottom this yr, however bounced again $4,832 by August as DATs had been trending. Now ETH sits at roughly $3,000, in response to CoinMarketCap.
Looking forward to 2026, Silagadze, who spends his time at ether.fi specializing in neobank options, mentioned he hopes Ethereum’s subsequent part 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 finally come from merchandise that really feel acquainted to mainstream customers however are constructed solely on crypto rails.
“I actually imagine that the intent is, or that the adoption goes to come back from a whole lot of these crypto, neobank kind gamers,” he mentioned, pointing to monetary companies that mix self-custody, yield, and composability in a single person expertise.
For Silagadze, that shift requires the ecosystem to maneuver past what he sees as an overemphasis on “playing”-driven exercise and towards purposes 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 carry sustained person development to Ethereum.
Which means “extra actual world use circumstances, 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 circumstances,” he mentioned.
In his view, neobanking-style platforms may function the bridge between Ethereum’s on-chain infrastructure and the following 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, pushed largely by memecoin buying and selling that pushed the community to its limits.
“January was a very loopy month,” mentioned Lucas Bruder, the CEO of Jito Labs, pointing to surging transaction volumes and unusually excessive income for validators and DeFi protocols. That stress helped harden the community.
In comparison with a yr earlier, Solana is now “tremendous buttery clean,” he mentioned, with quicker efficiency and meaningfully extra capability. Block area elevated roughly 25% in 2025, enhancing person expertise and decreasing charges, whereas a recent wave of DeFi groups arrived “very energized to construct on Solana.” The end result, Bruder argued, was a yr through 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 mentioned, including that it was the primary time the thought of a “decentralized NASDAQ” really began to materialize.
For Jito, 2025 was outlined by doubling down on infrastructure. The agency targeted on BAM, a brand new product designed to make transaction sequencing extra clear. The purpose, Bruder mentioned, 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 easy: “higher purposes, higher pricing for customers, and a greater person expertise.” That work units the stage for what comes subsequent.
A key inflection level for the community is anticipated to reach in 2026 with the rollout of Alpenglow, a long-anticipated improve to Solana’s consensus mechanism. Bruder described Alpenglow as a basic simplification of how the community agrees on blocks, one that ought to materially enhance reliability whereas sharply lowering affirmation occasions. At the moment, Solana transactions usually take 12 to 13 seconds to totally finalize; beneath Alpenglow, Bruder mentioned, finalization may drop to round one second, that means transactions turn into successfully irreversible nearly instantly.
That shift has important implications for high-stakes monetary exercise, the place quick, deterministic settlement is crucial. By tightening finality ensures and smoothing out community coordination, Alpenglow is designed to make Solana higher fitted to massive markets, with these enhancements broadly considered as conditions for high-stakes monetary exercise. In Bruder’s view, the improve is much less about incremental efficiency features and extra about solidifying Solana’s function because the infrastructure layer for what he repeatedly described as a “really decentralized NASDAQ.”
Learn extra: Solana Set for Main Overhaul After 98% Votes to Approve Historic ‘Alpenglow’
