Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) on Solana recorded roughly $20.2 billion within the week that ended February 16. The numbers prolong a streak of declining weekly buying and selling quantity for the fifth straight week, based mostly on DeFiLlama knowledge.
The information evaluation web site additionally revealed that within the week ending February 10, 2025, Solana’s on-chain transaction volumes fell by 28%, totaling $31.8 billion.
The slide in Solana DEX exercise has been linked to a broader market pattern. Comparable quantity reductions have been noticed throughout different blockchains like BNB Chain, Ethereum, Sui, and Polygon.
Solana’s declining numbers
In keeping with DeFiLlama, the weekly buying and selling quantity has fallen by 24.35%, totaling $28.893 billion over the previous week.
Meteora reported essentially the most exercise as the highest DEX with a quantity of $875.8 million, adopted by Raydium at $836.37 million and Orca at $322.32 million. The cumulative buying and selling quantity for the highest DEXs reached $155.172 billion over the whole interval.
Meteora had a weekly Complete Worth Locked (TVL) of $8.024 billion with a quantity/TVL ratio of 0.84, which signifies sturdy liquidity. Raydium had the next weekly TVL however a decrease quantity/TVL ratio of 0.5.
Whereas Solana DEXs have witnessed a quantity decline, these on Binance Good Chain (BSC) have picked up, and the chain presently has the very best buying and selling quantity amongst decentralized exchanges.
It is a stark distinction from March 2024 stats when BSC DEXs trailed in third place by buying and selling quantity at $47.81 billion, behind Solana and Ethereum, whereas the fourth spot went to Arbitrum’s $27.74 billion.
The rise in BSC’s buying and selling quantity signifies a major enhance in exercise and coincides with the return of memes to the ecosystem, which is ironic as a result of many consider one purpose Solana DEXs are declining in quantity is due to meme fatigue.
Solana presently has the moniker of the “residence of memes.” Nonetheless, this cycle has seen many unhealthy actors and egocentric gamers extract hundreds of thousands from the ecosystem because of Pump.enjoyable’s effectiveness in proliferating memes, even with none technical information.
Elements implicated within the Solana DEX decline
The decline in Solana’s DEX quantity might be partially attributed to the gradual cooling within the memecoin buying and selling craze that has gripped Solana because the bull run began. Many memes have come and gone, and customers appear to have been exhausted by the continual pump-and-dump schemes, rugpulls, and insider buying and selling.
The sentiment of merchants may be as a result of they’re nearly prepared for one thing completely different. Binance’s former CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), got here ahead with a meme that drove buying and selling visitors again to BSC and has seemingly now jump-started meme season on the chain.
The Solana chain stays a high competitor within the DEX market. The worth of the SOL token has considerably declined by over 50% up to now 12 months, however many analysts nonetheless stay optimistic in regards to the community’s long-term potential.
A superb instance of those that nonetheless consider in Solana’s supremacy is Mert Mumtaz, the Helius Labs CEO.
Following the most recent Libra memecoin debacle led by Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, Mert went off on trolls calling the Solana chain a rip-off chain due to the variety of memecoin scams that happen on it. In a collection of tweets, Mert talked in regards to the poisonous sentiments surrounding the chain, stating that the community itself has no management over what it’s used for.
So far as Mert is worried, the tech works, which is why memes have been so profitable on the chain, and nothing else issues.
