Standard Chartered still expects Ethereum to outperform Solana over the next year, extending a call the bank has held since mid-2025. But Ethereum's next major upgrade just slipped by up to six months, narrowing the scaling edge the bank's thesis leans on, while Solana's validators prepare to vote on tokenomics changes within weeks.
Standard Chartered's digital assets research head, Geoffrey Kendrick, began covering Solana in May 2025 by predicting one Ether would buy 17 Solana coins by 2028, up from 14 at the time. Today, one Ether buys roughly 25 Solana coins — already well past that forecast. The bank reaffirmed its Ethereum-over-Solana call most recently at a conference in July.
Price targets have fallen sharply
Standard Chartered has cut its targets repeatedly this year. It lowered its end-2026 Solana target from $310 to $250 on Feb. 3, then cut it again nine days later to $135. It also slashed its Ethereum target from $7,500 to $4,000.
At recent prices of about $86 for Solana and $2,270 for Ethereum, those targets imply Ethereum almost doubling while Solana rises 57%. That math would push the ETH-to-SOL ratio to nearly 30 Solana coins per Ether by December, further past the 17 Kendrick projected for 2028.
Both chains are voting on tokenomics
Solana's validators are weighing two governance proposals, SGP-0002 and SGP-0003, which would halve the pace of new coin issuance over time and raise the network's maximum daily coin burns from about 650 into the thousands. Ethereum has a comparable idea in EIP-8363, which would burn a rising share of validator rewards paid in Ether. Historically, major overhauls like these have been rejected by holders of voting power, but because the two chains compete closely for market share, one could pass reforms while the other fails — a split outcome that would matter for which coin performs better.
A scaling upgrade just slipped
Ethereum's bull case increasingly rests on boosting throughput through bigger blocks and cheaper transactions. On Aug. 17, however, developers confirmed that Glamsterdam, the chain's next major throughput upgrade, was delayed by as much as six months to Q4 2026.
Hegota, the upgrade slated to follow it, was pushed into 2027, with 66 proposed changes currently in triage and a shortlist due Aug. 27. Solana's governance vote, by contrast, is set to resolve within weeks.
Delays are common for major crypto upgrades and are not inherently bearish. But they mean the version of Ethereum that outperforms Solana on scaling arrives later, if it arrives at all — leaving the outcome to hinge on which chain's governance vote lands first.
Source: The Motley Fool
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