In November 2024, Solana processed over 65 million transactions in a single day, more than Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Polygon combined. The same month, Ethereum’s layer-2 networks (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base) collectively held over $20 billion in total value locked. Avalanche launched subnet technology allowing financial institutions to run private blockchains connected to its public network. Each platform serves a different segment of digital finance, and the competition between them is producing infrastructure that is faster, cheaper, and more specialised than any single blockchain could deliver alone. The global blockchain market reached $31.18 billion in 2025, per Fortune Business Insights, and the platform layer is where much of that value is being built.
Ethereum: The Institutional Default
Ethereum is the blockchain that most financial institutions build on first. Over 70% of tokenised real-world assets, including BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, are issued on Ethereum. The network hosts the largest DeFi ecosystem, with Aave ($12 billion in deposits), Uniswap ($1.5 trillion in cumulative volume), and MakerDAO ($1 billion in real-world asset vaults) all running on its base layer or its layer-2 extensions.
Ethereum’s advantage is ecosystem maturity. The network has the most developers (over 5,000 monthly active, per Electric Capital’s 2024 report), the deepest liquidity, the widest tool support, and the longest track record of continuous operation (since July 2015). For institutional compliance teams evaluating blockchain platforms, Ethereum’s nine-year operational history is a meaningful risk reducer.
The platform’s weakness is base-layer throughput. Ethereum processes 15 to 30 transactions per second on its main chain, with gas fees that spike during periods of high demand. A simple token transfer can cost $5 to $50 during congestion. This makes Ethereum impractical for high-volume, low-value transactions like retail payments.
Layer-2 networks solve this problem by processing transactions off the main chain and posting compressed proofs back to Ethereum. Arbitrum processes over 4,000 transactions per second with fees under $0.01. Base, built by Coinbase, reached over $2 billion in total value locked within its first year. Optimism powers applications that require Ethereum-level security with retail-friendly costs.
Solana: Speed for Consumer Applications
Solana processes over 4,000 transactions per second on its base layer, with fees averaging $0.00025 per transaction. This performance profile makes it the preferred blockchain for consumer-facing financial applications where speed and cost matter more than the established ecosystem of Ethereum.
PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin launched on Solana in 2024, joining Ethereum as the second supported chain. The decision was driven by economics: processing millions of small retail payments on Ethereum’s base layer would cost millions in gas fees. On Solana, the same volume costs effectively nothing.
Jupiter, the largest DEX aggregator on Solana, processed billions in daily trading volume during peak periods. The platform routes trades across multiple liquidity sources on Solana to find optimal prices, taking advantage of the chain’s sub-second confirmation times.
Visa ran a pilot in 2023 testing USDC settlement on Solana, noting the network’s speed and cost advantages for high-volume payment processing. The pilot was small in scale but significant in signal: a payment network that processes 65,000 transactions per second was evaluating a blockchain as potential payment infrastructure.
Solana’s weakness is network stability. The chain experienced several outages in 2022 and 2023, including a 20-hour downtime in February 2023. Each outage erodes institutional confidence. The network’s 2024 performance was significantly improved, but the track record of outages remains a concern for financial institutions where system availability is non-negotiable.
Avalanche: Custom Blockchains for Institutions
Avalanche introduced subnet technology that allows institutions to launch custom blockchains with their own validator sets, gas tokens, and governance rules, while remaining connected to Avalanche’s broader network. This architecture is particularly suited to financial institutions that need the control of a private blockchain with the interoperability of a public network.
Citi explored Avalanche subnets for foreign exchange settlement through a partnership with the Wellington Management and WisdomTree, testing how institutional-grade private chains could interact with public DeFi infrastructure. The subnet model lets Citi control who participates, what compliance rules apply, and how data is shared, while still connecting to the broader Avalanche ecosystem for asset pricing and liquidity.
The Evergreen subnet programme specifically targets institutional finance, offering pre-configured blockchain environments with built-in KYC/AML controls, privacy features, and customisable governance. For banks that want blockchain capabilities without participating in a fully public network, Avalanche’s subnet model represents a middle ground between private consortium chains (like R3’s Corda) and open public blockchains (like Ethereum).
Polygon, Base, and the Layer-2 Ecosystem
Layer-2 networks have become the primary growth vector for blockchain-based finance. These networks process transactions on their own infrastructure but inherit the security of the underlying layer-1 blockchain (typically Ethereum).
Polygon operates both a proof-of-stake sidechain and zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup technology. The network processes over 2 million daily transactions with fees under $0.01. Franklin Templeton’s OnChain tokenised fund runs on Polygon. Polygon ID provides zero-knowledge identity verification that institutions use for privacy-preserving KYC.
Base, Coinbase’s layer-2, launched in 2023 and rapidly grew to over $2 billion in total value locked. Its connection to Coinbase gives it a built-in distribution channel: users of the Coinbase app can bridge to Base seamlessly. This user base makes Base attractive for fintech companies building consumer-facing blockchain products.
Arbitrum has the largest total value locked among layer-2 networks, exceeding $10 billion by late 2024. The network hosts institutional DeFi applications, including Aave’s V3 deployment and GMX, a perpetual futures exchange. Arbitrum’s Orbit technology, similar to Avalanche’s subnets, allows institutions to launch custom chains that settle to Arbitrum.
Private Platforms: Corda, Hyperledger, and Custom Builds
Private blockchain platforms, which account for 42.47% of enterprise deployments per Fortune Business Insights, operate outside the public blockchain ecosystem but use the same underlying technology.
R3’s Corda is the most widely deployed enterprise blockchain for financial services. The platform’s design reflects institutional requirements: only transaction counterparties see transaction data (unlike public blockchains where all data is visible), smart contracts can reference legal agreements, and the network supports regulatory node access for supervisory monitoring. Over 400 organisations have deployed Corda for trade finance, insurance, capital markets, and payment applications.
Hyperledger Fabric, maintained by the Linux Foundation, provides modular blockchain infrastructure that enterprises customise for specific use cases. The platform supports pluggable consensus mechanisms, private channels, and identity management through membership service providers.
83% of financial institutions exploring blockchain, per Coinlaw, are evaluating platforms across this spectrum: public chains for tokenised assets and stablecoin settlement, layer-2 networks for cost-efficient processing, custom subnets for controlled institutional environments, and private platforms for compliance-sensitive operations. No single platform serves all use cases. The blockchain market’s growth to a projected $577 billion by 2034 will be distributed across this multi-platform ecosystem, with interoperability protocols determining how value flows between them.
