Solana could become the visa of digital-asset world: Bank of America

The Solana blockchain could become the “Visa of the digital asset ecosystem” as it focuses on scalability, low transaction fees and ease of use, Bank of America told clients in a research note after hosting Solana Foundation member Lily Liu.

Solana has experienced strong adoption since launching in 2020. It has settled over 50 billion transactions (Visa, the global payments giant, processed 164.7 billion transactions in the year ended Sept. 30), has more than $11 billion in total value locked and has been used to mint more than 5.7 million non-fungible tokens (NFTs), analyst Alkesh Shah wrote in the note published Tuesday. Solana is optimized for consumer use cases such as micropayments and gaming, the bank said.

“Solana prioritizes scalability, but a relatively less decentralized and secure blockchain has trade-offs, illustrated by several network performance issues since inception,” Shah said. “Ethereum prioritizes decentralization and security, but at the expense of scalability, which has led to periods of network congestion and transaction fees that are occasionally larger than the value of the transaction being sent.”

Bank of America said Solana and other blockchains could grab market share from Ethereum over time, and will begin to distinguish themselves through user adoption and developer interest.