If Solana (SOL) wants to truly compete with Ethereum (ETH) in the coming years, they will need to address both technical factors and the ecosystem.

I divide it into 5 main directions:

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1. Maintain speed & low fees advantage but ensure stability

Currently, Solana is much faster than ETH (high TPS, extremely low fees), but previous downtime issues have caused many investors to lose trust.

To compete with ETH, Solana needs:

Ensure the network has 99.99% uptime (avoid the 'network downtime' situation like in 2021–2022).

Upgrade the client like Firedancer to reduce latency and avoid congestion during spikes in transaction volume.

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2. Expand the Dapp & DeFi ecosystem

Ethereum has a massive DeFi, NFT, Layer2 ecosystem.

Solana needs:

Attract more high-quality projects (DEX, lending, stablecoins, NFT marketplace).

Focus on exclusive projects that ETH does not have or is difficult to implement (e.g., high-speed on-chain games, AI + blockchain applications, real-time payments).

Bring additional major stablecoins (USDC, USDT, PayPal USD) and potential CBDCs to Solana.

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3. Leverage low fees to explode the retail user base

High ETH fees exclude many small users from the game.

Solana can exploit this segment:

Enhance on-chain payments in collaboration with popular wallets like Phantom, OKX, Coinbase Wallet.

Integrate Web2 → Web3 (payment apps, e-wallets, social networks).

Be the default blockchain for GameFi & SocialFi (Friend.tech, Pump.fun).

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4. Marketing & branding

ETH is regarded as the 'king' of smart contracts due to its strong dev community and brand.

If Solana wants to compete, it must:

Brand association with pioneering technologies (AI + Blockchain, IoT + Blockchain).

Collaborate with major names (Elon Musk, Shopify, Visa, Stripe…).

Invest in an ecosystem development fund to finance new projects.

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5. Long-term roadmap & dev community

Ethereum has the strongest dev community in crypto.

Solana needs:

Expand the Solana Hackathon and support popular dev languages (Rust, Python, TypeScript).

Maintain a clear roadmap (Firedancer, ZK-Compression, sustainable tokenomics).

Increase the number of global validator nodes for greater decentralization, avoiding the label of being 'too centralized'.