On November 18, decentralized finance commentator Patrick Scott highlighted a significant trend within the Solana blockchain ecosystem, citing DefiLlama data. According to his post, five out of the top ten protocols by fees in the last 24 hours were based on Solana. This marks a notable achievement for the blockchain, as its low fees and fast transactions make it a hotspot for memecoin activity.
Solana-based automatic market maker Raydium achieved a record $11.79 million in fees on Nov. 17. On the other hand, Jito, a liquid staking protocol, piped in its third-highest day of $7.89 million. Memecoin launchpad pump.fun also had $1.65 million on its seventh-best-performing day. At the same time, a Telegram trading bot for SOL memecoins called Photon generated $2.36 million in fees on their 5th highest day ever.
Solana’s Bullish Momentum and Memecoin Growth
SOL has emerged as one of the standout assets of the current market cycle, reaching $241—a new yearly high and nearing its all-time high of $259. Analysts suggest that Solana’s breakout above $225 signals further bullish momentum. “A sustained hold above this level validates Solana’s bullish trajectory,” noted BRN analyst Valentin Fournier, highlighting robust buying interest from retail and institutional investors.
The memecoin BONK shows how the SOL ecosystem has retained its attractiveness. Launched in December 2022, BONK is being pushed by various community-dependent projects, including plans to reduce 1 trillion from circulation by the end of the year to improve scarcity. Its daily burns via SOL applications like Dragontail and BONKmark boost its utility. At the same time, traders see its $3.8 billion market cap as undervalued compared to previous bull cycle leaders like DOGE and SHIB.
Adding to the momentum, Coinbase listed Dogwifhat (WIF), Solana’s largest memecoin, on Nov. 15. This move propelled WIF to a six-month high of $4.19. Bitcoin’s recent surge has supported a much greater market revival. However, coins such as BONK and PEPE have gotten customer’s interest because they are highly volatile and cheap.
Solana’s Institutional Growth and DApp Funding Surge
Institution investors’ interest in SOL is also on the rise. In Q3 2024, Solana’s decentralized applications (DApps) secured a total funding of $173 million across 29 DAPPS funding events, a 54% increase compared to the previous quarter. Notably, this is the highest amount of new capital injected into the business since Q2 2022. This increases the interest in and growth of Solana’s blockchain further, regardless of the headwinds plaguing the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole.
SOL now has a Market Cap of $114 billion on the technical side, an increase from the previous all-time high of $77 billion in November 2021. The rise is also a result of the SOL inflation schedule, which diffuses freshly minted SOL tokens to the stakers. The current headline inflation rate stands at 4.9% with a yearly 15% drop as per SolanaCompass data, for which this model has further endowed SOL with increasing attractiveness among investors.
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