From CoinList to Crypto Fame: Solana’s Rise as 2024’s Top Blockchain
Solana made waves in the crypto space when it launched on CoinList back in 2020, selling 8 million SOL tokens at a clearing price of $0.22. Prior to that, CoinList spent a year working with the Solana team on their incentivized testnet, Tour de Sol.
Fast forward to today, the SOL token is up nearly 820x, and Solana has transformed from a promising newcomer into the most popular blockchain ecosystem of 2024, attracting massive retail, institutional, and builder interest.
To illustrate just how dominant Solana has been this year, let’s break down their recent growth:
1. User Growth
Solana’s on-chain activity is up almost 1,900% in 2024, with 100 million monthly active addresses. For comparison, Base has 22 million monthly active addresses, while all EVM chains have 52 million combined.
2. TVL & DEX Volume Surge
Solana’s total value locked (TVL) reached a multi-month high of almost $7 billion in October 2024. Top 5 dApps by TVL include:
- Jito ($2.47B TVL): liquid staking
- Kamino Finance ($1.72B TVL): liquidity provider
- Jupiter Exchange ($1.57B TVL): DEX
- Raydium ($1.53B TVL): DEX and AMM
- Marinade Finance ($964.08M TVL): liquid staking
Daily DEX trading volume, meanwhile, has seen consistent growth since August 2023, with a clear acceleration beginning in early 2024. It has occasionally matched or even surpassed Ethereum’s DEX volume (green) during peak periods.
3. Rising Transaction Fees
Before December 2023, Solana’s monthly market share of transaction fees never exceeded 1.5%. Since April 2024, Solana’s market share of transaction fees has consistently stayed above 10%, peaking at 25% in July. Transaction fees directly reflect users’ engagement in valuable economic activities, their willingness to pay for execution, and the ability for validators to turn a profit.
4. Memecoin Boom
Solana has become THE chain for memecoins, with tokens like Popcat (POPCAT) and dogwifhat (WIF) rising 12882% and 1108%, respectively, between January and September 2024. Memecoin devs are choosing Solana for its high throughput, the ability to process transactions at a fraction of Ethereum's cost, and a thriving community of memecoin traders. This proliferation of memecoin launches has fueled Solana’s 151% increase in network activity this year. Additionally, meme coins account for 77.8% of recent Solana-based trading volume on decentralized exchanges.
5. Ecosystem Funding
$173M was raised by projects primarily built on Solana in Q3 of 2024 alone, and Colosseum's second hackathon has seen 36% more registrations than its first.
6. Accelerating Institutional Interest
Franklin Templeton, Securitize (BlackRock's BUIDL tokenization partner), and Société Générale all announced Solana launches coming soon. At the same time, firms like Jump Crypto and Multicoin Capital have increased their participation in the Solana ecosystem, adding liquidity and bolstering long-term confidence.
7. Mobile dApps
To reach millions, dApps need to meet users where they are — on mobile. Jupiter, DRiP, and PhotoFinish LIVE announced mobile apps, while Solana Mobile's Seeker and Jambo's JamboPhone 2 are bringing crypto-native mobile devices to market.
8. DePIN Growth
Projects like Helium (1M+ hotspots), Hivemapper (7.5M+ km mapped), and Render Network are leveraging Solana’s infrastructure, showcasing real-world applications outside the EVM ecosystem and emphasizing Solana's role in decentralized physical infrastructure.
Solana’s rise against Ethereum has ignited discussions about its potential to flip Ethereum’s market capitalization in the not-too-distant future.
Can SOL actually flip ETH? Time will tell. Prepare for the next market movements on CoinList.
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