It’s another BIG week for Solana, with the blistering fast layer-1 chain finally crossing the $6 billion total value locked (TVL) mark last seen three years ago.
TL;DR
- Solana reached $6 billion TVL and six million daily active addresses
- SOL price up 6.17% for the week
- Solana ecosystem pumps, with meme coins and DeFi tokens leading gains
- FTX unstaked $28 million in SOL, Stripe enabled Solana payments for U.S. businesses
- 83% of circulating SOL is now staked!
Overview
It’s another BIG week for Solana, with the blistering fast layer-1 chain finally crossing the $6 billion total value locked (TVL) mark last seen three years ago. More recently, remember all that noise SOL bulls made last month when the network crossed five million active daily users? Well, we’re now at SIX MILLION.
If that ain’t network effect, I don’t know what is.
Source: Artemis
Solana Numbers the Last 7 Days
Between Oct. 9 and 15, Solana's market cap dipped to a low of $63.7 billion before climbing up to $74.18 billion, while the price ranged between $144 and $156. This indicates a 16% gain from its weekly low to the weekly high.
Solana's 7.2% seven-day gain aligns with the overall crypto market, which increased its total market cap by 5% to $2.28 trillion in the same period.
- Price: $153.15, up 6.17% for the week
- Market cap: $71.95 billion
- DeFi TVL: $6.16 billion
- Daily active addresses: >6 million
- 24h trading volume: $2,62 billion
How Did Solana Stack Up Against Its Competitors?
Lagging behind Bitcoin, which finally had a proper Uptober rally this week as Q4 and the elections race start to heat up, $SOL had a muted 5.80% increase, second to its biggest competitor, Ethereum, which gained 6.06% among non-stablecoins in the top 10.
There’s still plenty of catching up to do if the SOL-ETH flippening is to play out in 2025.
Importantly, at the time of writing (Oct. 15) Solana's weekly gain was above average for the top 10 cryptocurrencies, outpacing Bitcoin, BNB, and XRP.
Solana Ecosystem This Week
While $SOL was quiet this week, there was extreme volatility within the Solana ecosystem as investors began to jostle for DeFi and tier-2 meme coin entries. Amongst the top 20 Solana ecosystem tokens, there was only one real loser this week, Helium. Interestingly, Solana DEXs like Jupiter and Raydium are beginning to move as its DeFi activity picks up.
If you don’t like meme coins, look away now!
Top Gainers:
- BOOK OF MEME (BOME): +45%
- cat in a dogs world (MEW): +46%
- Bonk (BONK): 25%
- Raydium (RAY): +26%
- Jupiter (JUP): +16.91%
Top Losers:
- Helium (HNT): -10.01%
- Wormhole (W): -0.44%
Solana DeFi
It’s been a big week for decentralized finance on Solana, with that post-Breakpoint buzz translating into a significant total value locked (TVL) of $6.125 billion in its DeFi ecosystem, according to DeFilLlama.
- Raydium clocked a solid 39% surge, which explains the pump in $RAY.
- Sanctum comes second with 13.93% gains, while the majority of chains registered single-digit gains ranging from 2% to 9%.
- Drift maintained the biggest drop after sliding 1.37%.
Solana Meme Coins
You could have rolled the dice on almost every top Solana meme token this week and been in profit.
- Meme coin B-listers RETARDIO (RETARDIO), BOOK OF MEME (BOME), and PONKE (PONKE) are gunning for a Top 3 spot, up 85.8%, 50.7%, and 41.9% respectively. BOME’s 24-hour volume has a wild $1.2 billion, more than that of WIF.
- Fwog (FWOG) and cat in a dogs world (MEW) gained 10.4% and 25.0%.
- Dogwifhat (WIF), Bonk (BONK), Popcat (POPCAT), and michi (MICHI) registered single-digit gains, surging 8.5%, 7.8%, 9.1%, and 8% for the week.
- Gigachad (GIGA) finally sees red with a 6.6% drop.
While some of the Solana-based meme coin gains are exaggerated, it’s clear that Solana meme coins are back in vogue big time. It’s getting pretty frothy out there though, as this ridiculous $300 million AI-generated meme coin GOAT launch suggests. This week we also saw a wave of emoji-only meme coins make noise. Froothyyyy. Caveat emptor!
Solana DePIN
According to DePINScan, Render (RNDR) and io.net (IO) showed positive growth, with io.net leading at 13.2% and Render at 3.4%. Nosana (NOS) also performs well with a 5.7% increase.
In contrast, Helium (HNT) and Hivemapper (HONEY) experienced double-digit drops.
NFTs
According to NFTPulse, Solana is almost level with Polygon as the chain with the most NFT users, with Ethereum (17.8K users) and Base (22.7K users).
For the last year, Solana has taken the lead with 1.5 million users (36% of total) and trails Bitcoin in revenue with $27.7 million. Solana's chain volume in the past week reached $12.9 million while Ethereum pulled ahead with $35.1 million.
Solana leads the pack in chain royalties with $405.8K. Solana is competitive as it trades blows with leading chains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Polygon in user base and revenue.
Top 5 Solana News Stories
FTX Unstakes $28M in Solana
Here we go! Recent data shows the defunct FTX exchange unstaked 178,631 SOL tokens valued at $28 million. These tokens are likely to be moved to various wallets. This action has raised concerns about a potential selloff, which could impact Solana's market price. So far, the price is holding up well.
Stripe Enables Crypto Payments on Solana
Stripe has reintroduced crypto payments for U.S. businesses, enabling USDC transactions on Solana with additional support for Ethereum and Polygon.
Solana's TVL Surges, Exceeds $6 Billion
Solana's total value locked (TVL) has exceeded $6 billion for the first time since January 2022, marking a significant milestone in its decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem's growth. The increase in Solana’s TVL is driven by the rising SOL price, increasing on-chain activity, and the expansion of DeFi protocols on the network.
Solana's Co-Founder Invests in Blockcast
Blockcast, a new Content Delivery Network (CDN) built on Solana, has successfully raised $2.85 million in its seed round, led by Lattice Fund. The funding round attracted significant attention, including investment from Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko.
83% of Circulating $SOL Is Now Staked
Over the past month, Solana has seen a significant increase in staking activity, with 10 million SOL (worth $2 billion) added to the network. This trend accelerated in the last week, with nearly three million SOL staked as prices surged above $160. Over 83% of all circulating SOL is now staked, according to SolanaFloor.
The increased staking during a price rally suggests strong bullish sentiment among Solana holders, as they opt for long-term commitment over short-term profits.
What You Can Do Now
- Follow how Stripe’s introduction of crypto payments on Solana affects SOL’s price and network activity.
- Monitor FTX’s Solana unstaking and how it will affect SOL’s price.
- Explore opportunities in Solana's DeFi ecosystem as TVL surpasses $6 billion (carefully!).
- Investigate why Anatoly Yankoveko invested in a Solana-based CDN project.
- Watch SOL’s price action as investors bet on Solana, anticipating a strong uptrend.
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