Author: Yogita Khatri, The Block; Compiled by: Tao Zhu, Golden Finance

The debate between Ethereum and Solana continues - focusing on scalability, speed and decentralization. Fidelity Digital Assets, the cryptocurrency arm of asset management giant Fidelity Investments, said Ethereum has advantages but also acknowledged Solana’s growth.

In its 2025 outlook report, Fidelity highlighted Ethereum’s strong fundamentals, including strong developer activity, total value locked, and stablecoin supply. While Solana's revenue and TVL are growing faster, the majority of its revenue comes from memecoin trading, which Fidelity sees as a cyclical trend that thrives in bull markets but fades in bear markets.

Fidelity also noted similarities between Solana’s reliance on memecoins and Ethereum’s heavy use of Uniswap. However, it believes Ethereum’s fundamentals are less tied to speculation and more stable in the long term. Fidelity said these fundamentals guide long-term investors but may not predict short-term performance.

Fidelity said: "Short-term price trends often revolve around narratives, and Solana may be the more compelling contender in this regard in 2025 given the planned upgrades to both networks."

Solana’s Firedancer upgrade aims to significantly increase transaction speeds, while Ethereum’s Prague/Electra (Pectra) upgrade focuses on improving functionality, scalability and user security. However, Fidelity noted that the Pectra upgrade may not spark excitement in the community because it will not directly impact Ethereum’s value proposition from an investment perspective.

Fidelity said that because Ethereum is available through exchange-traded products, it currently has a clear advantage over Solana, although this may change based on regulatory decisions. It added that such decisions could strengthen Ethereum’s position or level the playing field, making it a key factor to watch in 2025.

Fidelity said that despite Solana’s short-term momentum, its performance could be beneficial to Ethereum in the long term, just as Solana’s underperformance until 2024. As the bull run continues, investors are expected to focus more on fundamentals, which may shift attention back to Ethereum.

In the 2025 Outlook report, Fidelity Digital Assets also shared its outlook on Bitcoin, saying that Bitcoin may still be the dominant currency in various economic scenarios in 2025. A valuable asset.

Fidelity also predicts that by 2025More governments, central banks and sovereign wealth funds will incorporate Bitcoin into their treasuries, following the example of Bhutan and El Salvador. It said: "Faced with challenges such as inflation, currency devaluation, and growing fiscal deficits, the risk of not making any Bitcoin allocation may be greater than making a Bitcoin allocation."

Fidelity acknowledges the meteoric growth of stablecoins but notes that they are not yet perfect products. It looks forward to taking further steps to address compliance risks, improve cross-chain interoperability and integrate with traditional financial systems. Stablecoins could co-exist with tokenized bank deposits, improving the efficiency of tokenized securities trading while maintaining the U.S. dollar’s ​​status as the global reserve currency, the report said.

Fidelity also calls tokenization the “killer” app of 2025. The company said the notional value of on-chain tokenized real-world assets has grown from $8 billion in 2023 to $14 billion and is expected to reach $30 billion by 2025. Fidelity added: “As institutions increasingly recognize the benefits of leveraging blockchain – including faster, cheaper and relatively frictionless operability – we expect growth in the tokenized asset class is likely to continue Expanding. ”

Fidelity said DeFi is also expected to continue to innovate in 2025, with areas such as dedicated blockchains, decentralized social media, decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) and crypto-artificial intelligence. achieve growth.

Fidelity believes mainstream cryptocurrency adoption will grow this year, saying it’s “not too late” for investors to get into the space, despite Bitcoin It recently topped $100,000.

“Indeed, we believe we may be entering the dawn of a new era of digital assets that will last for years — even decades,” Fidelity said. “This era is likely to see digital assets permeate every sector – industries, technologies, sectors, balance sheets, and even .”