Memecoin trading dried up but DeFi is picking up the slack.
Just one week after the Ethereum ecosystem made a new all-time high, Solana is following suit.
Solana’s total value locked (TVL) crossed the $31 billion threshold on Aug. 13, according to Token Terminal. The milestone edges out its previous all-time high of $30.8 billion set on Jan. 20, fueled by SOL’s explosive run to its all-time high token price of $293 after the TRUMP memecoin launch.
This time around, SOL is trading at $185, or 37% below its previous high. Despite the reduction in the token value, Solana’s ecosystem is continuing to expand.
Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, is the largest TVL driver on Solana with $8.7 billion, making up 28% of the chain’s ecosystem valuation. Lending protocol Kamino, decentralized exchange aggregator Jupiter, and liquid staking protocol Jito, make up for another $10.7 billion of TVL.
Trading on Solana has dropped drastically since January, following the previous all-time high driven by memecoin trading euphoria. At its peak, Solana processed $103 billion in a single week’s worth of trading volume. Meanwhile it managed just $16.9 billion over the last seven days, an 84% drop from the highs.
Despite the massive dropoff in memecoin activity, inflows to the chain have kept its DeFi scene in a growth phase. But the chain’s fee accrual is down substantially as well compared to the highs, falling from $530 million at the previous high, to $72.3 million now, all but mirroring the total trading activity chart.
