Solana signals 40% crash vs. Ethereum amid cooling memecoin craze

Key takeaways:

• SOL/ETH has broken below a rising wedge pattern, signaling a potential 40% decline.

• Solana’s memecoin revenue has collapsed since April, weakening its core value proposition.

• Standard Chartered warns Solana may underperform as Ethereum’s L2 ecosystem grows more competitive.

Solana’s (SOL) multiyear outperformance against Ethereum’s native token, Ether (ETH), is losing momentum, with technical breakdowns and weakening onchain activity pointing to a potential sharp decline in the SOL/ETH pair next.

SOL enters rising wedge breakdown stage

As of May 29, the SOL/ETH pair has confirmed a breakdown from its multimonth rising wedge pattern, a bearish structure that often precedes significant declines.

In technical terms, a rising wedge breakdown typically results in a drop equal to the pattern’s maximum height.

For SOL/ETH, this projects a downside target for July, near 0.038 ETH, representing a 40% decline from current levels.

The 50-week exponential moving average (50-week EMA; the red wave) around 0.0628 ETH is offering interim support. A decisive weekly close below this level would likely confirm the bearish continuation toward the 0.038 ETH target.

A bounce, on the other hand, could have SOL reclaim the wedge’s lower trendline as support, which may delay the breakdown scenario. Breaking above the wedge’s upper trendline will likely invalidate the 40% crash setup altogether.

Cooling memecoin frenzy hints at SOL/ETH crash

The breakdown in SOL/ETH aligns with a visible decline in memecoin-driven activity on Solana.

A key indicator is Pump.fun, the largest memecoin launch platform on the network, which shows a sharp drop in daily fee revenue since early April.

Daily fees peaked in Q1 2025 but have since fallen to near-yearly lows, signaling reduced speculative activity on the chain, according to Dune Analytics.

The platform had been a major contributor to Solana's revenue growth, especially between December 2024 and March 2025.

During this period, total cumulative fees surged past 3 million SOL as retail traders flooded the network to launch and trade meme tokens. These metrics have crashed ever since, weakening one of Solana's primary value drivers.

A May 27 report from Standard Chartered further reinforces the downside narrative. The bank warned that Solana may underperform if it cannot diversify beyond memecoins, which currently dominate its transaction activity.

Standard Chartered said that Ethereum is gaining ground with scalable layer-2 solutions that offer comparable fees and deeper infrastructure for real-world applications.

Related: Ethereum flashes ‘altseason’ signal as ETH price eyes $4.1K

Chartist Alex Clay asserts that a so-called “Ethereum outperformance season” has already arrived, reiterating confidence in the rising wedge breakdown on the SOL/ETH charts.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.