Okay, let's talk Solana. Everyone's jumping on the "Solana is dead" bandwagon because it hasn't smashed through $180 and the futures market is looking bleak. I see things very differently. Truthfully, I view this wave of negativity as a tremendous opportunity. Think of it like this: everyone's fleeing the stadium right before the winning touchdown. Their loss, our gain.

Underdog Status Fuels Innovation

Let's be real, Solana has always been the scrappy underdog nipping at Ethereum's heels. And that's a good thing. It forces innovation. Remember David vs. Goliath? Same energy here. Everyone's focused on the price charts and negative funding rates, but they're missing the bigger picture: Solana is building.

Jito's growth, for instance. No, this isn’t another memecoin factory, this is MEV-optimized staking and DeFi services. That’s utility in the truest sense, the sort that builds a loyal long-term user base and goodness knows—capital too. And that 12% TVL increase since January? That's not nothing. It’s an indication that people are truly engaging with the network.

Solana shadowed Ethereum and Tron wide in Q2 2025, producing $271.8 million in network revenue. More than double Ethereum! SolanaFloor further noted that Solana was on pace to finish first among all blockchains in network revenue for the third consecutive quarter. People are paying to use Solana, folks. By the way, that’s hardly a sign of a dying national chain.

Forget the short-term price action. Focus on the fundamentals. Solana, despite the doom and gloom, continues to be a very strong ecosystem with a passionate community. The underdog status just makes them hungrier.

Transaction Issues? Think Optimization, Not Failure

Okay, let's address the elephant in the room: those pesky failed transactions. People lament them, and I totally understand—it’s maddening. Here is where I believe we need a change in mindset. High transaction failure rates are not an indication that something has failed; they actually could indicate high demand. Imagine it as trying to get into the coolest club in town. Bouncer analogy I know that the bouncer is a tough character, but it’s because everybody’s trying to get in.

Solana's team knows about the transaction issues. They're not ignoring it. They're actively working on optimizing the network. Remember, these are design choices. They did this intentionally prioritizing speed and low fees understanding the trade-offs with doing so. Trade-offs can be optimized! This isn’t a crucial defect, it’s an obstacle to be navigated.

And now other institutions like Robinhood and Coinbase are building their own Layer 2 solutions. They’re further fueled by concern over MEV and the validators’ intense/full ownership of desire validators. That seems a lot like centralized control under the guise of decentralization. Being open-source, Solana invites more innovation and transparency. I’ll take my chances on the open-source underdog over the centralized gatekeepers any day.

Ethereum's L2s? Competition is Good!

Everybody is bitching about Ethereum’s L2s being Solana’s kryptonite. I disagree. Competition is good. It forces everyone to up their game. If we’re being real with ourselves, Ethereum’s rollup strategy – as awesome as it sounds – is not a sure thing smash hit.

To think that this will limit Solana’s upside because they incentivize rollups by keeping their data fees low is extremely shortsighted. Solana has a more integrated user experience. It can be faster, cheaper and far easier to use than Ethereum in most use cases. That matters to the average user.

Think of it like this: Ethereum is building a sprawling metropolis with lots of different neighborhoods (L2s). Meanwhile, over in Solana, you can picture them building a very tight, walkable compact city with everything mixed in. Which one would you rather live in?

Additionally, the extremely high staking ratio of 66.5% is a huge factor that everyone is underestimating. This limits the effective supply of TRON available supply on exchanges, creates an incentive to hold and can lead to price appreciation in the long run. It’s an indicator of their long-term confidence in the permanence of the network.

So, is Solana dead? Absolutely not. Is it facing challenges? Sure. But it's innovating, building, and growing. But the negative funding rate is just that—a temporary blip and a sign of market misjudgment, not a death knell. I'm betting on the underdog. I'm betting on Solana. And I think you should too. This isn’t all about the lucre, though it is nice. It’s about securing a future that is more innovative, decentralized, and equitable. That's something worth fighting for.