Solana Flips Ethereum in Monthly DEX Volume For First Time Ever

Solana’s decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are processing the most onchain volume in Web3, beating out Ethereum, which has been the long-time holder of that title.

For the first time ever, Solana’s decentralized exchanges had higher monthly volume than Ethereum’s, with $54 billion versus $52 billion in July, according to DefiLlama.

Currently, 29% of DEX trades happen on Solana, while 28% happen on Ethereum

Ethereum Layer 2 Arbitrum lands in third place with $24 billion, BSC in fourth with $17 billion, and rounding out the top five is Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2 Base with $15 billion.

A caveat to Solana’s DEX victory is that if Ethereum Layer 2s were counted as part of their base layer’s DEX activity, Ethereum would still come far ahead.

Driving Solana activity are memecoins, new tokens issued on the blockchain originate in pump.fun, a platform that enables users to quickly issue these largely useless coins. Yesterday, more than 17,100 tokens were created, and the trend has been for double-digit memecoins launched since March.

Decentralized exchanges on Solana are led by Raydium and its $1.08 billion in TVL, followed by Drift with $400 million, and Orca with $251 million. The sector has $1.4 billion in 24 hour volume, according to DefiLlama.

Solana’s story is nothing short of impressive.

It suffered a number of bumpy years where the network suffered congestion after congestion which drove protocol developers to halt the blockchain on several occasions. Later the close relationship to convicted crypto criminal Sam Bankman-Fried also had it on its heels.

According to the data compiled from DefiLlama, Solana began its regular appearance in the top 10 in terms of DEX volume in mid 2022. It made its first leap forward, surpassing Avalanche and Polygon, in May, 2022 (RIGHT?).

Solana’s most significant jump in monthly DEX volume happened in the last quarter of 2023 when it jumped to $28 billion from $880 million in September.

If Solana-based memecoins continue to narrate and drive the market, the chain might be able to hold its place among the leading networks for at least a while longher.