XRP vs Solana: Who’s the Upcoming Altcoin King for Gambling?

The recent uptick in cryptocurrency sales may have been sparked by Bitcoin (BTC) and, to an extent, Ethereum (ETH), but behind the headlines, there is another battle underway. XRP vs Solana is the Dogecoin vs Shiba Inu of the crypto gambling infrastructure, both with huge market backing and offering different solutions to the same problems.

Ripple (XRP) is the more robust of the two. Currently trading at $3.45, the coin hasn’t seen dramatic surges in the past few months and is unlikely to do so. XRP is attracting steady inflows week-on-week, and its future growth is highly dependent on steady accumulation rather than any Hollywood-style spike.

Unlike Solana (SOL), which has seen its price explode in the last bull cycle from a couple of bucks to a seismic $250. It has steadied since then and is currently trading at $200, but remains the altcoin on everyone’s radar, particularly in the context of iGaming.

Solana (SOL) Banking on Speed

Designed to develop and facilitate scalable DApps via PoH consensus, Solana casinos have a clear advantage. The coin’s combo of high processing speed and low latency makes it a perfect gaming companion, able to execute theoretical 65,000 TPS and a real-world speed of 5,000 TPS.

Additionally, Solana’s block time of under 1 second, with fees not exceeding $0.01 (often much lower), makes it an ideal currency for smaller bets, such as flipping a few spins here and there, as well as live sports betting.

Where Solana falters is equally important. The gargantuan spike in the last bull cycle screams price volatility, and who’s to say that investors might move past Solana in search of the next crypto rocket launch? Equally undermining are the network outages (19 hours in 2023), while reputationally, Solana (SOL) suffers from allowing a slew of memecoins on its network.

Ripple (XRP) Relying on Stability

If Solana is the new kid on the crypto block, Ripple is the altcoin royalty that, yes, did falter recently, but has the institutional strength to get back on track. After all, XRP is the fourth best-performing crypto of 2024, up by 303.9% with a market cap of $142.3 billion (behind coins with significantly smaller caps).

Ripple (XRP) operates on the Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm (RPCA), which requires an 80% consensus agreement among trusted validators for every transaction. The XRP Ledger block time is quick (3-5 seconds), and its best use-case scenario is facilitating quick and low-cost cross-border payments between businesses.

While not tailor-made for iGaming like Solana, XRP is nevertheless a more suitable solution if price volatility is your primary concern and you don’t require the absolute fastest network in the business. It is projected to remain within the $4-$8 range in 2026, while Solana (SOL) could fluctuate by up to 95%.

The challenges of XRP are primarily legal and don’t affect gaming in any way.

Solana vs XRP for Gaming in 2025

The debate rests on two pillars: The Solana vs XRP price predictions and their speed.

SOL is the clear winner in terms of speed and efficiency of iGaming transactions and is best used for small, frequent bets. The analytics from Tanzanite.xyz back this up: SOL is the fifth most used cryptocurrency across the top three crypto gambling sites (Stake, Roobet, BC.GAME), with an average deposit of $733 for the past year. It almost doubled in the last week ($1.5K), but that’s no doubt due to the speculative bandwagon from the last bull cycle.

On the Ripple (XRP) side of things, the coin has fewer congestion issues and is more likely to get institutionally adopted across the board. Banking partnerships mean that the XRPs price will stay stable for at least another year, and that it has all the tools to survive the upcoming legislative efforts to regulate crypto in the EU and beyond.