Solana DEX recorded a total weekly volume of 12.7 billion USD
The cryptocurrency market is experiencing a major bull run, and one of the biggest beneficiaries is Solana, a blockchain platform that rivals Ethereum in speed, scalability, and innovation. Solana decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have seen unprecedented levels of trading activity over the past week, breaking all-time records and attracting more users and liquidity go online.
According to data from Defi Llama, a website that tracks DeFi metrics, Solana DEX traded over $12.75 billion worth of digital assets in the week of February 24 to March 2. Here's a staggering increase of more than 175% since last week and far surpassing the previous record of $9.88 billion traded in a single week set in mid-December.
Source: DefilLama
The leading DEX on Solana is Orca, which has facilitated $4.5 billion worth of transactions in the past seven days. Orca is a liquidity aggregator that allows users to swap tokens across multiple pools and protocols with minimal fees and slippage. Orca has more than doubled its trading volume since two weeks ago and now holds more than $1.2 billion in total value locked (TVL), a measure of the amount of assets deposited in a DeFi protocol.
Another prominent DEX on Solana is Raydium, which reached a trading volume of $3.52 billion during the same period. Raydium is an automated market maker (AMM) that leverages Solana's high throughput and low latency to deliver fast and efficient trading. Raydium also integrates with Serum, a decentralized exchange built on Solana that supports order books and limit orders. Raydium has also more than doubled its trading volume since two weeks ago and has more than $1.1 billion in TVL.
The increase in trading activity on Solana DEX reflects the growing popularity and adoption of Solana as a blockchain platform. Solana claims to offer over 50,000 transactions per second (TPS) with sub-second finality and negligible fees, making it an attractive alternative to Ethereum, which suffers from congestion and high costs. Solana also supports a vibrant ecosystem of projects and innovations, from DeFi to gaming and NFTs.
One of the most notable aspects of Solana is its native token, SOL, which has been going viral lately. SOL hit a 22-month high of $137 on March 1, after rising more than 16% in a week. SOL is used to pay for transactions and execute smart contracts on Solana, as well as to stake and secure the network. SOL also benefits from the demand and utility of other tokens built on Solana, such as Serum (SRM), Raydium (RAY), and Orca (ORCA).
SOL price chart. Source: TradingView
Another factor that has boosted Solana's appeal is the rise of memecoins, which are tokens that have no intrinsic value but are fueled by social media hype and speculation. Some of the most popular memecoins in the crypto market are based on Solana, such as BONK and Dogwifhat. BONK is a token that rewards users for creating and sharing memes, while Dogwifhat is a token that features a dog wearing a hat. Both tokens have seen huge gains over the past week, with BONK up over 2,000% and Dogwifhat up over 1,000%.
Solana's momentum shows no signs of slowing as the network continues to attract more users, developers, and investors. On Saturday, March 1, Solana DEX surpassed $2 billion in daily trading volume for the second time ever, reaching a total of $2.025 billion. The only time Solana DEX exceeded that number was on December 21, 2020, when they reached $2.6 billion amid a meme coin frenzy. Solana also reached its highest TVL across the chain in November 2021, when assets on the network surpassed a value of $9.9 billion.
