This Institutional Investor Thinks Ethereum Will Outperform Solana During the Next 12 Months. Could It Happen?

Ethereum’s next major upgrade (Glamsterdam) was pushed back by up to 6 months to Q4 2026, delaying the throughput-driven catalyst versus Solana. Standard Chartered cut its end-2026 Solana target from $310 to $250 and then to $135, while reducing its Ethereum target from $7,500 to $4,000, implying Ethereum should outperform Solana despite the delay. Near-term upside hinges on whether Ethereum scaling arrives on time and whether Solana’s governance proposals (e.g., reduced coin issuance and higher burn rates) pass.

Analysis

This is less a pure “which chain is better” call than a timing and supply-math trade. ETH has the cleaner path to relative outperformance if holders keep getting more value per coin while the market waits on utility upgrades, but the delayed throughput roadmap pushes that bull case into late-2026 and makes it more fragile. For SOL, a holder-friendly tokenomics vote can lift the token mechanically, yet it also risks impairing validator economics; if staking returns compress too far, network security and participation quality can deteriorate, which is a second-order negative often missed in simple burn narratives.

Near term, the spread should be driven by governance outcomes and upgrade cadence, not by user adoption. That favors ETH over 1-3 months if macro liquidity is steady, because the market can re-rate monetary policy faster than it can reprice delayed scaling benefits. Over 6-18 months, though, the thesis weakens if ETH’s upgrade stack slips again or if activity migrates to cheaper execution layers, leaving the burn story with less fee base than the market assumes.

Contrarian view: consensus is treating this like a binary winner-takes-all contest, but the bigger variable is crypto beta and capital rotation. If SOL’s proposals pass and ETH misses its next launch window, the relative trade can reverse quickly; the setup is therefore better expressed as a spread than an outright directional bet. The key falsifier is a sustained move in ETH/SOL back below the recent range after the governance votes and the next Ethereum triage decision.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Express the view as a relative-value pair: long ETH / short SOL on any post-news strength, using spot or perpetuals, with a 1-3 month horizon and a stop if SOL’s governance vote passes cleanly and ETH delays again.
• If using options, buy ETH call spreads and finance part of the premium by selling SOL call spreads over the same tenor; this caps downside while capturing a potential 10-20% relative re-rating in ETH/SOL.
• Avoid outright shorting SOL into the vote unless liquidity is thin and positioning is crowded; the cleaner risk/reward is waiting for a rally to fade after the decision, because favorable tokenomics can trigger a mechanical squeeze.
• Set an alert on the ETH/SOL ratio around the recent breakout zone; if it fails to hold after the governance window, cut the pair trade because the market is signaling that timing risk on ETH’s upgrade path dominates the burn narrative.