Solana vs Starknet Market Cap Battle: The Layer 1 and Layer 2 Competition Behind the Data

“Starknet currently has only 8 daily active users and just 10 daily transactions, yet its market cap still reaches $1 billion, with a fully diluted valuation of up to $15 billion.” On January 14, 2026, this tweet from Solana’s official social media account was like a stone thrown into a calm lake, instantly stirring waves in the crypto community. The exaggerated data quickly prompted responses and teasing from industry leaders, including StarkWare CEO.

The Controversy: An Industry Debate Sparked by a Single Tweet

Competition in the crypto world has always been straightforward, but this time Solana’s public mockery brought the long-standing valuation debate between Layer 1 and Layer 2 into the spotlight.

Solana chose a very delicate timing to post this tweet. At that moment, Starknet had just announced reaching an important milestone with its total locked value (TVL) back over $300 million. The tweet rapidly fermented within the crypto community, sparking widespread discussion among developers and investors. Within hours, the post spread quickly across crypto social platforms.

The Data Truth: The Gap Between Outdated Information and Current Reality

The most controversial figure, “8 daily active users,” does not reflect Starknet’s current situation. This data seems to be based on outdated or selectively chosen snapshots, possibly from a period of activity decline after the 2024 airdrop. More recent data from Dune Analytics shows that Starknet processes about 245,416 transactions daily, with 2,369 active transaction addresses in the latest activity window. Other estimates suggest about 65,000 daily active users and approximately 759,000 daily operations.

According to the Dune dashboard created by Starknet Foundation, Starknet currently maintains 2,000-4,000 daily active users and over 240,000 daily transactions. Compared to the peak period in 2023 when daily active users exceeded 100,000, today’s Starknet has fewer active users, but transaction frequency has reached about one-third of that level. This indicates that the current Starknet users are mostly high-quality users with real transaction needs.

Valuation Logic: The Clash Between Execution-Driven and Option-Driven Approaches

The core of this controversy is a fundamental disagreement on how blockchain networks should be valued. Solana’s criticism implies that token valuation should closely track observable user activity. From this perspective, regardless of technological maturity, networks with limited daily active users should not have a multi-billion-dollar fully diluted market cap.

Supporters of Starknet hold the opposite view. As a zero-knowledge rollup, Starknet’s valuation is based on long-term infrastructure relevance, alignment with Ethereum, and cryptographic scalability, rather than short-term user throughput.

These two valuation philosophies can be summarized as: execution-driven valuation, focusing on current usage and transaction volume; versus option-driven valuation, pricing future adoption and technological potential.

Starknet’s Comeback: From “On-Chain Ghost Town” to Capital Inflow Leader

In fact, after more than a year of effort, Starknet has been able to compete with most Layer 1 networks.

According to DeFiLlama data, Starknet’s TVL has been rebounding since September 2025, now exceeding $300 million, returning to 2024 levels. More notably, Starknet has shown strong performance in capital inflows. Artemis data indicates that Starknet’s three-month net capital inflow reached $504.2 million, ranking first among blockchains, with Polygon in second place, $100 million behind.

A key reason for this comeback is Starknet’s full commitment to the BTCFi ecosystem. In March 2025, Starknet’s parent company StarkWare announced the establishment of a “strategic Bitcoin reserve.” In September of the same year, Starknet launched BTC staking and a 100 million STRK incentive plan.

Market Reaction and Gate Price Data

This controversy also directly impacted the market. According to monitoring, after the dispute, a whale address opened a short position on STRK with about 5x leverage. As of January 16, 2026, Gate data shows Starknet’s price changed by -5.02% over the past 24 hours. Currently, the circulating supply of STRK is 5.2 billion, with a total and max supply of 10 billion STRK.

From a market cap perspective, STRK’s market value is $435.49 million, with a fully diluted market cap of $836.5 million, and a market cap to fully diluted market cap ratio of 52.06%. This is significantly different from the “$15 billion fully diluted valuation” mentioned in Solana’s tweet. Market sentiment toward Starknet is currently marked as “bullish.” According to Gate’s price forecast data, Starknet’s average price in 2026 could be around $0.08383, with a range between $0.06706 and $0.09808.

Industry Reflection: Beyond Tweets and Jokes, a Deep Competition

This controversy is much more than a quarrel over eight users or ten transactions. It represents a clash of narratives between two opposing blockchain philosophies: visible activity versus invisible infrastructure.

Solana leverages selective metrics to reinforce its identity as a high-usage, execution-first network, while Starknet exposes the limitations of surface data when evaluating long-term scaling solutions. The outcome of this debate is unclear, but it reminds us that in crypto, valuation is both a narrative and a statistical matter.

For investors, builders, and analysts, this event sends a clear message: data lacking context can mislead, and narratives without fundamentals will ultimately collapse.

Gate data shows that during the height of the controversy, STRK’s 24-hour trading volume reached $1.55 million, with prices fluctuating between $0.083 and $0.08933. The dispute did not seem to dampen investor trading enthusiasm. Hours after the controversy, monitoring found that two whale addresses had begun partially closing their short positions for profit, with an average entry price of about $0.0897 and an overall return of approximately 15%. Markets always digest narratives quickly and return to value itself.