Multicoin’s Kyle Samani calls for SOL to flip ETH in market cap “this cycle”
He cited Solana’s $23M in 30-day fees versus Ethereum’s $12.6M while arguing ETH value accrual is concentrated in stablecoin activity.
Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani put a timeframe on a long-running Solana-versus-Ethereum debate, saying Solana will surpass Ether’s market capitalization “this market cycle.” The call leans on recent fee comparisons and a blunt critique that Ethereum’s usage and value accrual are weak outside stablecoins.
Key Takeaways
- Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani said Solana will surpass Ether’s market capitalization “this market cycle.”
- At the market-cap snapshots cited, SOL sat near $58 billion versus ETH near $293 billion, implying roughly a five-fold move for SOL to overtake ETH if ETH is unchanged.
- DefiLlama’s 30-day fee totals showed Solana at $23 million (fourth) versus Ethereum at $12.6 million (sixth), a concrete metric Samani used to argue Solana’s economic activity is leading in the recent window.
- TradingView comparisons showed SOL slightly outpacing ETH over the past month (+34% vs +30%) while still lagging over the past year (-59% vs -45%), keeping the “higher beta off a smaller base” framing intact.
Samani Puts a “This Cycle” Flippening Target on SOL vs ETH
Kyle Samani is no stranger to the Solana bull case. The new part is the clock. The Multicoin Capital co-founder said Solana will flip Ether during “this market cycle,” turning a perennial narrative into a timing claim that traders can actually mark against levels and flows.
A “flippening” here is straightforward. It means SOL’s market capitalization surpasses ETH’s market capitalization, where market cap is price multiplied by circulating supply. The packet’s point-in-time figures put SOL around $58 billion and ETH around $293 billion, which is why the same framing also embeds the hard math: at those levels, SOL needs roughly a five-fold increase to overtake ETH if ETH does not move.
That gap matters because it changes what “outperformance” has to look like. A few weeks of relative strength is not enough. A flippening requires either a step-change repricing of SOL, a sustained drawdown in ETH, or both.
Samani also argued the competitive shift is operational, not philosophical. “They’ll all switch their default over to Solana because it’s the most functional network for all of them and it’s just easier to consolidate their operations around Solana to the extent that they can.” The packet does not include named examples of companies making that switch, so the claim stands as forward-looking positioning rather than confirmed migration.
The Numbers He’s Pointing To: 30-Day Fees and Recent Relative Performance
Samani anchored his argument in a metric traders increasingly treat as a rough proxy for demand: fees. DefiLlama data in the packet showed Solana generating $23 million in fees over the past 30 days, ranking fourth among chains, versus Ethereum at $12.6 million, ranking sixth.
Fees are not the same thing as tokenholder value accrual, but they do map to one thing markets care about. Someone is paying to use blockspace. When that persists, it tends to pull builders, liquidity, and market makers toward the venue where activity is densest, because spreads tighten where volume lives.
The price tape in the packet is consistent with a relative-value trade already in motion, but not yet decisive. TradingView comparisons showed ETH up 30% over the past month versus SOL up 34%. Over the past year, SOL was down 59% versus ETH down 45%.
That split is the tell on positioning. SOL can look like it is “winning” in a rebound window while still being the asset that suffered the deeper drawdown in the prior regime. In practice, that often means SOL/ETH relative strength can be as much about beta and reflexive rotation as it is about a durable shift in where value accrues.
Ethereum’s “No One Uses It” Claim and the Stablecoin-Centric Critique
Samani’s ETH bear case is unusually blunt. He said “today, no one really uses Ethereum,” and argued Ethereum remains a leading network largely due to stablecoins and stablecoins borrowed against Ether as collateral.
The packet does not provide independent usage metrics to validate the “no one uses it” line, so it should be treated as a thesis statement, not a measured fact. The more actionable part is the framing: Ethereum’s activity is described as concentrated in stablecoin settlement and collateralized borrowing loops, which implies usage that can be high in transaction count and TVL optics while still being less compelling as a growth engine for ETH itself.
He tied that to value accrual directly, saying he is “bearish” on Ethereum’s ability to accrue value. “It’s a $400 billion to $300 billion asset that has questionable value accrual, if any, and it’s not growing at all.” That is the core claim traders need to interrogate, because it is the bridge between “fees exist” and “the token deserves a higher multiple.”
There is also an incentives layer that cannot be ignored. Samani and Multicoin “amassed a sizable early position in Solana,” and Multicoin led some of Solana’s earliest investment rounds in 2018. Multicoin reported managing $5.9 billion of assets as of May 2025, which gives the firm real ecosystem gravity and also makes the counterparty question unavoidable: a SOL-over-ETH flippening is not an abstract debate for a Solana-aligned fund.
Confirmation Checklist for Traders: What Data Would Validate the Thesis
The cleanest confirmation is persistence. If Solana continues to out-earn Ethereum on DefiLlama’s 30-day fees across subsequent monthly windows, the “one-off spike” risk fades and the argument starts to look structural rather than episodic.
The second confirmation is migration you can name. Samani’s claim that companies will “switch their default” to Solana needs verifiable examples of new builds choosing Solana first, or existing teams consolidating operations there, not just general sentiment.
Relative performance is the third filter. SOL beat ETH over the past month in the packet (+34% vs +30%). The market will care whether that extends into a multi-month trend in SOL/ETH, because that is where positioning and liquidity start to reinforce the narrative.
The final check is the moving target itself. The cited market caps were roughly $58 billion for SOL and $293 billion for ETH, but both sides of that ratio move. If ETH rallies alongside SOL, the “five-fold” requirement can stay stubbornly intact even with SOL strength. If ETH stalls while SOL keeps gaining, the gap can compress faster than most expect.
My Read: This Is a Narrative Trade Until the Migration Evidence Shows Up
The threshold that matters is not the fee screenshot. It is whether Solana’s fee lead persists while real builders and liquidity providers make default choices that are visible and sticky. Without that, the setup is still mostly a relative-beta rotation dressed up as fundamentals.
If SOL/ETH keeps grinding higher and the market-cap gap compresses meaningfully from the cited ~$58B versus ~$293B snapshot, the flippening stops being a slogan and starts becoming a positioning problem for ETH holders in size.
