Standard Chartered sees Solana reaching $500 by 2029, but expects it to underperform Ethereum in the near term

Standard Chartered Bank has initiated coverage on Solana, predicting the token will underperform Ethereum over the next two to three years due to its overreliance on memecoin trading, but expects SOL to rise from its current price of around $175 to $500 by 2029 — though with slower near-term upside compared to ETH.

"Solana's current uses are very trading-heavy. Within trading, Solana dominates memecoin trading," Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered's global head of digital assets research, wrote in a report published Tuesday and shared with The Block. "This is because of its ability to process a large number of transactions simultaneously while maintaining low fees for users."

While memecoin trading has stress-tested Solana's infrastructure, it's not a sustainable growth driver, according to Kendrick, who said the market is applying a discount to Solana's future earnings from the memecoin sector, which appears to have passed its peak.

"Solana trades 'cheap' on our market cap-to-GDP metric, whereas BNB (another Layer 1 smart contract platform) trades 'rich' due to its unique link to Binance's centralized exchange," Kendrick said. He defines a blockchain's GDP, or gross domestic product, as the total revenue generated by the applications and protocols built on it.

With memecoin activity likely past its peak and Solana trading 'cheap' to its GDP, near-term performance could suffer. "Declining usage and trading 'cheap' are not a good mix," Kendrick said.

While Solana is well-positioned to support future sectors that need fast, low-cost transactions — such as financial apps, social media and decentralized physical infrastructure networks ( DePIN ) — Kendrick expects these areas will take another two to three years to scale, as projects launched during the 2021 DeFi peak mature.

"As a result, Solana is likely to face a two- to three-year period of lower activity (as measured by GDP). SOL is also likely to continue to trade 'cheap' relative to its GDP until other sectors become established users of Solana," Kendrick said.

In line with Solana's expected underperformance versus Ethereum over the next few years, Kendrick projects that the ETH-SOL ratio will rise from around 15 to 17 by end-2027, before easing. For SOL-USD, he forecasts $275 by end-2025 and $500 by end-2029.

Kendrick has made several crypto predictions in recent months. He expects bitcoin to hit $200,000 by end-2025 and $500,000 by 2028. His other targets include BNB at $2,775 and XRP at $12.50 by 2028 , and Avalanche's AVAX at $250 by 2029 . He has lowered his ether forecast to $4,000 for 2025 . He also sees stablecoin adoption rising sharply, with the total market reaching $2 trillion by the end of 2028.

Kendrick told The Block last month that neither he nor Standard Chartered's crypto research team holds any digital assets.