Jupiter airdrop propels Solana DEXs to outpace Ethereum in daily trading activity

Solana-based Jupiter airdrop has generated substantial excitement, driving decentralized exchange (DEX) trading activity on the layer1 blockchain network beyond that of Ethereum.

Data from DeFillama shows that Solana-based DEXs facilitated trades totaling $1.14 billion in the last 24 hours, surpassing the approximately $1.13 billion traded on Ethereum-based platforms during the same period.

This achievement underlines the remarkable growth and widespread adoption witnessed within Solana’s DeFi ecosystem, capturing the crypto community’s attention. Notably, last December marked the first instance of Solana DEXs outpacing Ethereum, propelled by heightened memecoin and stablecoin activity.

While the daily figures demonstrate Solana’s momentary lead, it’s essential to note that the weekly transaction volume of Solana-based DEXs stands at $6.113 billion, slightly trailing behind Ethereum’s $7.852 billion.

Jupiter airdrop

On Jan. 31, decentralized exchange aggregator Jupiter executed a noteworthy airdrop, distributing approximately $700 million worth of its native token, JUP, to nearly a million wallets. The trading platform is the most dominant protocol on Solana, facilitating trades worth $11 billion in January.

Its airdrop garnered substantial attention from the crypto community, leading to rapid listings on major centralized exchanges like Bybit and Binance. On its first trading day, the asset witnessed an impressive volume surpassing $1.4 billion, propelling the token’s value to a peak of $0.72 before settling at $0.62 as of press time, according to CoinMaketCap data.

On-chain investigator Lookonchain identified three airdrop participants who amassed over $1 million in gains. These individuals received a collective airdrop of 5.5 million JUP tokens, valued at an estimated $3.6 million, distributed across approximately 27,600 wallets.

The launch and airdrop of Jupiter’s token significantly boosted activity on the Solana network. Notably, the web3 wallet Phantom reported unprecedented traffic levels, tripling the total volumes seen after the recent WEN meme token launch.

Blockchain analytical firm Artemis corroborated this, pointing out that the anticipation of the airdrop had driven active addresses on Solana to more than 1 million earlier in the week.

Despite the surge in activity, Solana’s network demonstrated exceptional stability, dispelling concerns of potential downtime that had plagued it in the past.