Solana revenues fall 93% from January peak

Solana (SOL) lost 93% of its revenues from the January peak, now lagging behind BNB Smart Chain and other networks. The Solana trading frenzy was short-lived, as Pump.fun lost 70% of its daily revenues. 

Solana (SOL) no longer produces peak revenues, reflecting an outflow of trades. Solana produces 93% lower revenues compared to its January peak, losing revenues due to lowered DEX activity. The slowdown in new meme token launches and a series of scam tokens discouraged traders and decreased overall traffic.

Solana’s lower revenues are a direct effect of the lower token trading volumes. As of January 13, Solana meme trading surpassed $80B on a weekly basis. In March, token trading volume has come down to $28B, based on TokenTerminal data. 

The entire Solana ecosystem, with the busiest apps, has already gone down the charts in terms of daily revenue production. Solana, Jito and Pump.fun have fallen also fallen behind their peers on other networks. JupiterDEX aggregator is still ranked right behind PancakeSwap, with $4.56M in daily revenues. However, both Solana and its apps have capitulated from their peak economic activity in late 2024, seeing much lower fees since mid-January.

The lowered activity kept pressuring the SOL market price. SOL traded at $130.56 after the latest market recovery. The recent outflow of users affects retail wallets, as most of the Solana users have a balance of less than 1 SOL. The largest cluster of traders holds a balance of 10-100 SOL, with a small fraction of whales with over 10K SOL. Large holders with over 10K SOL are just 4,971 wallets. 

Solana loses token-based activity

As a result of the lowered activity, Solana fees crashed to as low as $6.4M per week, down from a peak of $89M. All apps in the ecosystem were affected, especially the MEV bot builder JitoSOL and the Jupiter DEX aggregator. Solana was an example of peak on-chain GDP and was considered to be one of the top examples of a product market fit. 

Solana made its best earnings for the three months ended on January 15, which reflected the most active part of the bull cycle. In the post-election euphoria period, Solana’s apps achieved over $751M in revenues. Most protocols retained their earnings fully, without sharing with users.  

Solana’s fees started crashing from January onward, driven down by a sudden outflow from meme tokens. The chief reason was the series of launches for official tokens, which ended up in losses or outright rug pulls. In January, Solana had a spike as traders competed to snipe Official Trump (TRUMP), MELANIA, in addition to the widely promoted LIBRA. 

Solana’s daily and weekly active users peaked in November, but revenues remained high for a few months after that. For Solana tokens and new memes, a significant part of activity came from whales or high-activity traders. At the same time, retail wallets moved away from Solana. On average, Solana now carries 16.4M active wallets on a weekly basis, or around 2.7M active wallets daily, with some fluctuations. 

Solana’s value locked also peaked on January 23, at over $11B. Solana’s DeFi sector slowed down again, and the chain now carries $6.96B in value locked. Trading and DeFi have slowed down, despite the $12.34B in stablecoin liquidity, mostly coming from new USDC printing.

Solana bot activity also slows down

Solana also saw an outflow of trading bots, one of the chief tools for sniping and quickly trading tokens. Previously, the share of bot activity on Solana was up to 86% of all trades. Now, Solana’s share has fallen toward 80%. 

Some of the activity switched to Base and BNB Chain, which now take up 5% of bot activity each. Around 7% of bot transactions are on Ethereum. 

Solana remains the go-to chain for meme trades, with new launches based on social media trends. However, most of the Pump.fun volume has diminished, as the platform now produces just 25K new tokens daily, with revenues down to $1M or lower on some days. Fewer tokens are graduating from Pump.fun to Raydium, further decreasing demand for bot activity. 

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