While it's true that low transaction fees make it trivial to pump naïve metrics like active users, new tokens, and raw dex volume - we can adjust for that and get a closer to apples to apples comparison of where chains stand relative to one another.
Here, we use Lending Market adoption ($100k+ in token deposits on Solana SAVE (formerly Solend), $1M+ in token deposits on Ethereum AAVE) as a proxy for a token's legitimacy (i.e., liquidity is too widely owned for the issuer to wash trade at scale). This Lending Market Listing adjustment reduces the scope of tokens being analyzed and we look at only trades between the tokens on these lists.
The major growth targets for Solana to reach 50% of Ethereum market cap are roughly:

More stablecoin adoption, especially in lending markets as a means of credit expansion. USDC, USDT, and PYUSD are all growing on Solana, with USDC leading the pack on Solend lending deposits ($50M, $10M, $2M respectively).
More robust transaction fee markets so that SOL emissions to validators can be reduced (currently ~80-90% of Solana validator rewards are emissions instead of transaction fees. The goal is for tx fees/usage to replace this over time).

Already Adjusted DEX Volume on Solana is ~35% of ETH mainnet (~20% of ETH Mainnet + Op/Arb/Base if you bundle in the major EVM L2s).
As Solana firedancer goes live enabling faster mempools and consensus: more blockspace, protocols, and "legitimate" tokens should enable more robust transaction fee markets and eventually a reduction in emissions.

Dashboard	Creator	Published
Near DeFi Review Sep 4, 2024	charliemarketplace	Sep 4, 2024
Solana Rewards Nov 29, 2023	charliemarketplace	Nov 29, 2023
How Solana Catches Up Sep 26, 2024	charliemarketplace	Sep 26, 2024

charliemarketplace