According to data compiled by venture capital firm Pantera Capital, the Solana blockchain accounted for over 60% of the incremental volume in decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in May. Pantera referred to Solana as the “macOS of blockchains,” attributing its growth to its monolithic architecture. This architecture, similar to Apple’s macOS, integrates hardware and software to deliver superior performance. Solana’s share of DEX volume has risen from 0% at the beginning of 2021 to 24% in May 2024. Pantera noted that Solana’s architecture has facilitated a surge in retail activity in recent months.
Pantera Capital is one of the investors in the Solana blockchain and previously raised funds for a new fund aimed at purchasing up to $250 million worth of Solana’s SOL tokens from the FTX bankruptcy at a discounted price. The number of unique active addresses on the Solana network increased from 14,000 in October 2020 to nearly 1.3 million in May 2024. As a result, priority fees on Solana have skyrocketed, growing from less than $100,000 per month in mid-2023 to over $60 million in March 2024.
Solana’s architecture has also made it a favored choice for developers working on memecoins and decentralized infrastructure projects. Since January, the network has witnessed a surge in new token volumes, surpassing other chains like BNB Smart Chain, Ethereum, and Polygon.
Furthermore, Solana’s performance has had a positive impact on its SOL token. CoinMarketCap data reveals that the price of SOL has increased by over 723% in the past year, currently trading at $123.
Pantera’s report, however, does not delve into the network’s past challenges, including downtime caused by technical issues. The most recent outage occurred on February 9, resulting in nearly five hours of downtime. To address such issues, Solana’s Firedancer upgrade is slated for a full version release in 2025, with “pared-down versions” being rolled out before then. This upgrade, developed in collaboration with Jump Crypto, aims to enhance the network’s resilience, reliability, and scalability as activity continues to grow.