Despite its crowd of very persistent holders, Cardano (ADA 0.90%) only has a market cap of $13.8 billion, making it a lot smaller than even Dogecoin, (DOGE +0.52%) with $20 billion, as well as larger chains like Solana, (SOL 1.93%) which has a cap of $71.3 billion. Perhaps surprisingly, I predict that this state of affairs will remain largely the same through the end of 2026, with both Dogecoin and Solana continuing to maintain or even dramatically expand their lead over Cardano.
Let's talk about why these contenders are likely to keep standing in roughly the same places on a relative basis through 2026.
Image source: Getty Images.
Dogecoin could stay above Cardano without being a buy
For some investors, Dogecoin's edge over Cardano may seem strange. After all, it's just a meme coin, and Cardano is an entire smart contract blockchain with its own (limited) decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem and community of application developers. But the dog-themed coin has a couple of benefits the more serious asset lacks, at least for now.
In particular, as of late November, Dogecoin now has U.S.-listed spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that let people buy exposure through ordinary brokerage accounts. While some spot Cardano ETFs are being considered for approval, presently Cardano doesn't have any active ones, so it can't get capital inflows from the same sources, thereby limiting its size.
CRYPTO: ADA
Key Data Points
ETFs can make capital a bit stickier than you would expect for a meme coin, because it lowers onboarding friction and turns buying into a quick button press instead of a complicated system of setting up crypto wallets and funding them. And Cardano can build more and ship more, and still lose that particular fight if investors keep preferring the easiest path for exposure.
But none of this adds up to a reason to invest in Dogecoin, and there isn't really an investment thesis for holding it in general.
CRYPTO: DOGE
Key Data Points
Solana's lead over Cardano could increase
Whereas Dogecoin's advantage over Cardano is in its distribution, Solana's is in having better distribution, plus more capital and more efficient technology.
In crypto, the chains that host the most usable liquidity (capital) tend to keep winning, because liquidity attracts developers, and when developers make apps that people want to use, they then attract more liquidity. Solana has about $8.7 billion in DeFi total value locked (TVL), and about $15.7 billion in stablecoins parked on the chain. Cardano only has $180 million in DeFi TVL, and about $38 million in stablecoins outstanding -- a negligible sum that isn't sufficient to support any big expansions of its ecosystem activity. So even if Cardano were to suddenly become the home of a killer decentralized application (dApp) that led its DeFi TVL and stablecoin base to increase 10 times overnight, which certainly will not occur, it would still be trailing very far behind Solana.
CRYPTO: SOL
Key Data Points
Speed and cost advantages held by Solana are more likely to reinforce that situation rather than lead to it equalizing over time. On Dec. 15, Solana was handling about 1,155 transactions per second (TPS) on its chain, versus around 0.7 TPS for Cardano, with average transaction fees near $0.0075 for Solana versus about $0.134 for Cardano, and block processing times of about 0.4 seconds versus about 20 seconds with Cardano. So Solana's throughput is vastly higher, its costs are much lower, and it's dramatically faster than Cardano, too. That's far too many huge gaps for the smaller network to overcome before the end of 2026, or even 2028.
Cardano could keep improving, and there is a chance it closes some of the technical gap over the long run -- if it continues to limp along. The harder part is closing the capital gap, because liquidity is social as much as it is technical, and it takes time to persuade users to relocate. And right now, the only real relocation is capital and users flowing from Cardano to Solana.
