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Trading volume on Solana-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs) blew past an all-time record this week, cementing the Ethereum rival’s place among the top beneficiaries of the crypto market’s current, steadily escalating bull run.
Over the period of February 24 to March 2, more than $11.19 billion worth of digital assets were traded on Solana decentralized exchanges, according to data compiled by Defi Llama. That figure is up over 154% from the preceding seven-day period.
Those figures far exceed the previous record-holder for Solana DEXs’ best week ever—$9.88 billion traded in one week, a milestone that was hit in mid-December.
By far, the DEX with the greatest contribution to last week’s Solana DeFi frenzy was Orca, which has seen some $4.5 billion worth of trading volume in the last seven days. Not far behind is Raydium, which saw $3.52 billion in trading in the same period. Both exchanges have seen activity more than double since two weeks ago.
The last several days, which have seen crypto prices skyrocket across the board, have been particularly fruitful for Solana-based tokens. By last week’s end, SOL surged to a 22-month high after rising over 30% in a week. And on the meme coin front, some of the market’s biggest winners have hailed from Solana, including perennial classics BONK and Dogwifhat.
On Saturday, daily trading volume on Solana DEXs crossed $2 billion for only the second time ever, amounting to $2.025 billion in total. Only on December 21, in the midst of a meme coin-fueled frenzy, did Solana DEXs exceed that figure, hitting $2.6 billion.
While those figures are certainly encouraging, they do not mean that the value of the Solana ecosystem is at—or even near—an all-time high. The total value locked (TVL) across all of Solana currently stands at just over $2.6 billion, according to DeFi Llama—meaning that while great sums have been traded back and forth on Solana recently, the total value of those assets is substantially lower than trading volume figures might suggest.
Solana reached its highest chain-wide TVL in November 2021, when assets on the network eclipsed $9.9 billion in value.
Edited by Andrew Hayward