Solana (SOL) had a one-week streak, where almost daily, the L1 chain posted daily transaction records. The Solana network carried more than 72M transactions as of December 24, far surpassing other chains.
Solana is one of the few L1 chains with the technology to scale as an L1 network. The chain still subsidizes its validators, while also expanding its outreach. As of December 24, Solana set a new record for daily transactions, with more than 72M transfers. The record arrives at a time when Ethereum has stagnated at around 1.22M daily transactions, as most of the rapid DEX activity has moved to L2 scalable chains.
After the new record, SOL remained under $200, awaiting a recovery. SOL traded at $194.35, trying to recover after the latest market drawdown. SOL open interest slowed down toward the end of the year, to about $3B.
Solana’s daily transactions expanded by 300% in 2024
Data from Artemis shows Solana kept up the trend for all of 2024, after starting the year with 24M daily transactions. Solana has gone through growth pains during busy periods, where failed transactions reached up to 70%. In the past few weeks, the chain achieved a 30%-35% failure rate, allowing for more successful swaps.
Earlier in 2024, some of the top chains briefly surpassed Solana but failed to reach its sustainable expansion. At the end of 2024, Solana hosts 86%-89% of all major chain bot users, with the rest spread between Ethereum, Base, and BSC.
The influence of Solana also pushed away some of the legacy chains from the previous bull cycle, including Avalanche and Polygon. Bot traffic has been one of the key features of Solana, as the speed of DEX trading and meme token activity is too high for human traders.
Solana gets support from meme token activity, which has not slowed down. The Pump.fun platform had a brief slowdown in September but then returned with even higher daily volumes.
After producing some of the most appealing memes, Solana also got a boost to its DEX activity. Raydium, Jito, and Solana are still in the top 10 fee producers, though they have fallen away from the top 5 spots.
The current transaction peak with relatively lower fees suggests a simpler token activity instead of DEX routing or trading. Solana still produces $3.08M in daily fees, with $4.21M for Ethereum.
One of the worrying metrics for Solana is that most users carry less than 0.01 SOL, indicating the high number of transactions may carry very small economic value.
Solana meme tokens boost the chances of a super cycle
Solana’s top memes are valued at over $10B in market capitalization, taking into account the value of the 15 most active assets. BONK, WIF, and BOME remain key memes with regular inflows of new traders and whale funds.
Pump.fun decreased its activity over the last week of December. Despite this, the platform hosts more than 150K daily active wallets, with more than 50K tokens created in the past few days.
Meme tokens also require bot activity, including market makers and boosts to appear more active. Part of the peak Solana transactions may be part of that approach to boosting the positions of new memes.
Solana remains a highly competitive ecosystem, where risk and growing pains are part of the process. Despite this, the chain remains a staple in Web3 space.
In addition to meme tokens, Solana got a boost from Pengu (PENGU) activity. The native token of the Pudgy Penguins collection is attracting attention from both retail and whale buyers. PENGU rose by 20% overnight after a series of previous records, trading at $0.036. The token is picking up activity again, boosting Solana transactions through its decentralized trades on Raydium.
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