Solana DEX Volumes Surpass Ethereum’s Despite Drop in Meme Coin Trading

In keeping with VanEck’s February crypto report, Solana’s decentralized trade (DEX) volumes have proven resilience regardless of declining meme coin buying and selling.

The report exhibits that Solana’s buying and selling exercise briefly surpassed that of the Ethereum ecosystem, together with its Layer 1 (L1) and Layer 2 (L2) networks.

Solana Maintains Excessive Buying and selling Exercise

VanEck’s analysts revealed that the value of Solana (SOL) elevated by 191% in 2024, whereas its on-chain revenues grew by 700%. The blockchain’s low transaction charges, averaging $0.05 in comparison with Ethereum’s $1.27, have contributed to its capability to deal with excessive commerce volumes effectively.

Meme coin buying and selling has added majorly to Solana’s income, accounting for about 80%. Pump.enjoyable, the community’s meme coin maker, has additionally collected over $577 million in charges inside a yr.

Nonetheless, the market has been affected by issues about insider buying and selling and automatic bots buying tokens earlier than retail buyers, with the LIBRA coin controversy an instance of this. Launched in February, the coin bought mired in allegations of insider buying and selling and market manipulation when its worth rapidly collapsed, leaving buyers reeling from hundreds of thousands value of losses.

In that very same month, a collapse in meme coin buying and selling led to an 80% drop in Solana’s stablecoin transfers from its January ranges. Different buying and selling metrics additionally declined, with DEX volumes falling by 55%, charges collected dropping by 63%, and MEV exercise reducing by 63%.

Regardless of these setbacks, the community’s general buying and selling volumes remained aggressive with Ethereum’s total ecosystem. Additional, the blockchain is about to bear a number of protocol upgrades, that are anticipated to reinforce its efficiency.

Ethereum’s Decline and Potential Options

Ethereum has additionally seen a decline in income and general utilization. Over the previous yr, fuel costs have fallen 88%, and its income has dropped 93%. The community’s share of whole blockchain income decreased from 55% in February 2024 to 24% in February 2025.

In keeping with Matthew Siegel and Patrick Bush from VanEck, Ethereum’s technique of encouraging customers to maneuver to L2 options has diminished exercise on its Mainnet. Consequently, main initiatives comparable to Uniswap and Ondo have begun increasing past the community.

In the meantime, its transaction throughput stays decrease than competing blockchains, with a recorded most of 63 transactions per second (TPS) in comparison with Solana’s 4,000 TPS.

To deal with these challenges, validators elevated fuel limits by 20% in February, elevating transaction capability from 30 million to 36 million fuel items. The upcoming Pectra upgrade, set for this month, contains adjustments to L2 blob capability, validator stake limits, and staking processes.

Moreover, the Ethereum Basis has introduced Intents, a software program replace geared toward enhancing transaction effectivity throughout Layer 2 networks.