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Solana<\/a> is now the top smart-contract blockchain by trading volume, surpassing Ethereum<\/a>, according to data from DeFiLlama.\u00a0<\/p>\n The volume of tokens trading on Solana-based decentralized exchanges<\/a>, aka DEXs, climbed by 67% to $21.3 billion over seven days, whereas volume on Ethereum-based equivalent exchanges rose by just 3% to $19.4 billion. Likewise, the number of daily active addresses on Solana has also spiked, rising from 400,000 to 600,000 in January to February to roughly 1.25 million on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the surge we\u2019ve seen in Solana DEX trading volumes will likely come from the memecoin<\/a> wave that we\u2019ve seen over the past few weeks,\u201d Martin Lee, a data analyst at Nansen, told Fortune.\u00a0<\/p>\n Speculative buzz around Solana-based memecoins dogwifwhat (WIF), bonk (BONK), book of meme (BOME), MAGA (TRUMP)<\/a>, and slerf (SLERF) is partially behind Solana\u2019s recent successes. On March 13, 2,300 Solana memecoins were minted in one hour, meanwhile stablecoins on Solana reached a multiyear high of $2.80 billion.<\/p>\n In the last 1 hour, 2,500 Solana memecoins were created.<\/p>\n \u2014 Ram Ahluwalia CFA, Lumida (@ramahluwalia) March 13, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n The speculative frenzy behind Solana\u2019s memecoins has been catalyzed by a trend called \u201cpresales\u201d whereby tokens are sold before officially launching. A buyer sends funds to a crypto address and receives the set number of tokens at a later date. Some estimate that over $100 million worth of tokens were sent to various memecoin presales over the weekend, mainly on the Solana blockchain, CoinDesk<\/em> reported<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a bastion of memecoins attracting users with the lure of outsized returns: Speculation on these are likely currently driving an influx of users, but I\u2019m hopeful that new entrants will stick around,\u201d Philip Forte, founder and CEO of Elixir, told Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n The hype of presales has grown with the success of BOME. Last week, its creator took to X<\/a> to offer a presale, and the result was that early investors turned a few hundred dollars into hundreds of thousands over a few days. Meanwhile, BOME\u2019s market capitalization soared from zero to $1.6 billion in a few days, with over $100 million in daily trading volume, CoinDesk<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n This BOME presale meta is the worst thing to happen in this space in a while https:\/\/t.co\/06cOaB48W7<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Franz (@Franz_0x) March 17, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n But the presale frenzy has drawn criticism from some on-chain watchers, with one X user posting: \u201c2 years later and everyone is right back to bidding ponzis. People can do what they want with their money but sending money to a \u2018memecoin presale\u2019 that has a 99.9% chance of rugging is actually just dumb as hell.\u201d (BOME prices did drop after its launch, about 50% at the week\u2019s start\u2014steeper than a wider market correction<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason Solana is able to capture all the memecoin volume as opposed to ETH L2s is because Solana\u2019s transactions fees have been historically much lower,\u201d Pat Doyle, Blockchain Researcher at Amberdata, told Fortune<\/em>.\u00a0\u201cThis makes investing in the speculative memecoins much more attractive as you don\u2019t have a larger percentage of your transfer consumed by fees.\u201d<\/p>\n Doyle added: \u201cLooking at this from a broader view, the memecoin craze is showing the ability for Solana to handle high volume\u00a0and throughput.\u201d<\/p>\n And, to be fair, many investors had an eye on Solana before the latest memecoin boom: The blockchain\u2019s native token SOL\u2014though down about 8% today, to $168\u2014is up almost 70% in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n
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