In a historic turn of events, Solana has outpaced Ethereum in decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume within the last week. According to DefiLlama data, Solana surged to an impressive $10.1 billion in DEX volume, eclipsing Ethereum’s $8.8 billion during the same timeframe.
The remarkable spike in Solana’s DEX activity owes itself to two key factors: notably lower gas fees compared to Ethereum and the meteoric rise of meme-based cryptocurrencies. Among these, BONK, the premier memecoin on the Solana network, made headlines as it soared to a market capitalization exceeding a billion dollars following its listings on major platforms like Binance and Coinbase. Another standout memecoin on Solana, Dogwifhat (WIF), garnered attention by swiftly ascending from obscurity to a market cap of $322 million. Both BONK and WIF emerged as top traded tokens on Solana’s DEXs over the past week, excluding stablecoins.
The collective success of these memecoins, coupled with substantial airdrops from platforms like Jito (JTO), played a pivotal role in driving SOL’s remarkable rally. As a result, SOL experienced a staggering surge, flipping XRP and achieving a new high for 2023 at $99, according to CoinMarketCap.
Despite these recent gains, SOL’s market cap currently stands at approximately $41 billion, significantly trailing behind Ethereum, which maintains a market cap of $268 billion—more than seven times larger than Solana’s.
