The public chain Solana has been extremely active recently in online activities. According to DeFiLlama data, Solana's DEX trading volume reached US$9.2 billion in the past week, surpassing Ethereum's US$9.09 billion, ranking first among all public chains, with a growth rate of 52.6% in the past week.
Especially from September 28th to 30th, Solana’s daily trading volume exceeded Ethereum for three consecutive days.
Solana Dapps transaction volume grew 46% weekly
In addition, according to DappRadar data , Solana's Dapps transaction volume has also increased significantly, growing 46% in a week to reach $760 million. In comparison, Ethereum's growth rate was 22.25%.
Looking at further details, the transaction volume of Solana's Dapps has generally increased, with Marinade Finance growing by 66%, Pump.fun rising by 93%, and Solend soaring by 143%. In contrast, the transaction volume growth of Ethereum Dapps mainly relies on a few applications, such as Balancer, which increased by 91.6%, but Uniswap, which only increased by 13%.
Solana adoption potential comes from meme coins, payments and blockchain games
The recovery of transaction volume on the Solana chain is probably related to the recovery of the encryption market at the end of September. In particular, meme coins once again became the main theme of the market, making Solana, the meme currency paradise, a public chain that coin speculators flocked to. At that time, it was the most popular chain. The hippo meme coin causing FOMO in the market $MooDeng was also launched from Solana’s Pump.fun.
In addition, Solana's blockchain games and PayFi narrative also make the community look forward to the emergence of new applications in Solana. On September 24, the Solana-based handheld game console PSG1 opened for pre-order. At the same time, Solana Labs cooperated with Google Cloud to launch the game development API "Gameshift", aiming to provide a complete set of Web3 services for traditional game developers, including NFT and digital assets. If chain games can still break out in Solana, like the previous example of StepN, it is expected to attract more players to join Solana.
In terms of PayFi narrative, Solana is developing applications for cross-border payments, creator monetization, commercial lending and subscription payments, such as Fuse wallet and Sanctum, and will soon launch debit cards to help attract new users.
Extended reading: Solana Breakpoint highlights PayFi: What application scenarios and opportunities were revealed?
VanEck sees SOL rising to $330
Payment applications seem to be the perfect place for Solana. Recently, American asset management giant VanEck released a report stating that Solana’s significant advantages in speed and cost efficiency allow it to surpass Ethereum in payment and remittance services. In particular, stablecoins, which are a key driving force in DeFi, can take advantage of Solana's efficient processing capabilities to bring significant cost savings to users.
The report emphasizes that Solana’s throughput can handle thousands of transactions per second (TPS), which is 3,000% higher than Ethereum; at the same time, Solana’s daily active users are 1,300% higher than Ethereum, and its transaction fees are cheaper than Ethereum 5 million%.
Based on these strengths, VanEck predicts that Solana could rise to $330 and push its market capitalization to half that of Ethereum. The current market capitalization of Solana is $68.7 billion and Ethereum is $299.3 billion, which means that SOL needs to rise another 118% to catch up to half of the current market capitalization of Ethereum.
