Solana has emerged as the top choice for investors, surpassing top assets like BNB and Ethereum in terms of global investor interest.

According to a Wednesday report by Coingecko, Solana, currently the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization accounted for 49.3% of global investor interest in blockchain ecosystems, while Ethereum followed closely behind with 12.7%.

The growth of Solana’s popularity can be attributed to several factors, including the development of ecosystem projects like Pyth Network (PYTH) and the popularity of meme tokens such as SLERF and ‘Dogwifhat’ (WIF). Additionally, Solana’s high trading volumes and low transaction fees have made it an attractive option for investors.

On the other hand, Ethereum maintained its position as a leader in the L2 protocols segment, with second-layer networks built on Ethereum gaining increasing popularity among investors.

“This is likely because Ethereum is already well-established as an ecosystem and familiar to investors, such that it is no longer considered a new, trending crypto narrative. At the same time, attention towards the Ethereum ecosystem is increasingly dispersed across the layer 2 ecosystems building on top of it,” Coingecko wrote.

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Arbitrum and Base emerged as the most popular second-layer network ecosystems, with 3.3% and 3.2% of investor interest, respectively.

Other L1 ecosystems, such as Cosmos, Avalanche, and Sui, also gained traction among investors. According to Coingecko, Cosmos’ success can be attributed to successful airdrops like Celestia and Dymension, while Avalanche’s meme tokens like Coq Inu have contributed to its popularity. Sui, on the other hand, lept ahead of TON in terms of investor interest despite TON’s connection with the Telegram messenger.

The report also highlighted the growing interest in L2 networks, with Arbitrum, Polygon, zkSync, and Metis attracting notable attention. Optimism, Blast, and StarkNet are among the top 20 L2 networks.

Notably, Ethereum’s recent Dencun hard fork, which activated on the mainnet on March 13, significantly impacted L2 networks. The update reduced commissions in L2 networks based on Ethereum, leading to a significant increase in the daily volume of transactions on Base, one of the projects that benefited the most from Dencun.

That said, Solana’s emergence as the top choice for investors comes amidst a notable price surge for the crypto asset. Notably, the asset recently tapped $200 and is up over 100% year to date, making it one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies in recent months.

Despite witnessing a brief pullback that saw it plunge to $164 earlier this week, Solana bulls managed to push the price back up, with optimism of a further price surge growing.

At press time, SOL traded at $170.92, reflecting a 9.40% drop in the past 24 hours.