Meme Coin Mania Helps Push Solana DeFi Volume Over Ethereum for First Time

By Sander Lutz

After accelerating for weeks, momentum in the Solana ecosystem has finally accomplished the improbable: Transaction volume for decentralized exchanges (DEXs) on the blockchain has finally eclipsed that of exchanges on rival Ethereum, at least in the last week.

DEX volume on Solana has soared to $9.03 billion over the last seven days, according to data from Defi Llama. In that same period, decentralized exchanges on Ethereum have seen $8.836 billion worth of transactions. 

That victory may end up short-lived, as Ethereum is already edging out Solana in DEX volume over the last 24 hours, but it is nonetheless significant. Decentralized exchanges—such as Uniswap on Ethereum and Orca on Solana—facilitate the peer-to-peer exchange of all sorts of cryptocurrencies, particularly meme coins that aren’t listed on centralized exchanges. Historically, the lion’s share of that trading has always been concentrated on Ethereum.

But recently, DEX activity on Solana has surged, in large part thanks to the network’s lower gas fees. Solana meme coin BONK dominated crypto discourse for weeks after soaring from humble origins to a staggering billion-dollar market capitalization. 

Then, earlier this week, the ecosystem found another gem in Dogwifhat (WIF), another dog-themed Solana coin that’s skyrocketed an astounding 376,000% since launching a month ago. On Thursday, the coin briefly pushed past a $250 million market capitalization, before settling back down to $204 million, according to CoinGecko.

Blockchain data aggregated by Dune from some of the top Solana decentralized exchanges shows that BONK and WIF are among the top traded tokens over the past week, outside of stablecoins.

In the meantime, SOL has continued to surge off the network’s good fortunes, flipping XRP on Wednesday and breaking another record for 2023 by topping $80. At writing, SOL is up higher still: above $89, according to CoinGecko.

Solana users hailed these developments, along with other promising signs from the Solana NFT ecosystem, as evidence that the blockchain’s time had finally come.

But by other metrics, the chain still has a long way to go. Even with recent gains, SOL's market capitalization sits just above $37 billion. Ethereum is over seven times larger, at its current market cap of $268 billion.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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