The Solana blockchain network became the primary platform for launching memecoins and one of the most active in the world in terms of user numbers, maintaining its position among the largest in 2025
In 2025, Solana (SOL) retained its status as one of the largest and most widely used first-tier blockchains and secured its place in the top 10 by capitalization with a value of over $70 billion. As of December 16, according to Coinmarketcap, the price of SOL stands at $126, with the peak price reached in mid-January above $290. SOL currently ranks seventh among the largest blockchains, down from fifth at the beginning of January.
Having survived several cycles of price declines and recoveries, the project has entered the end of the current year with a stable ecosystem, high user activity, and an established community around the project. In 2025, this blockchain became the main one for the memecoin market: even heads of state participated in the launch of a cryptocurrency based on Solana.
The peak price of over $290 came at the launch of the official memecoins of US President Donald Trump (OFFICIAL TRUMP) and his wife Melania Trump (MELANIA) in mid-January 2025.
These events also coincided with increased demand for SOL from traders on decentralized exchanges based on Solana. For example, when TRUMP was launched, network fees reached a record $14 million on January 19, according to Defillama. For comparison, the current values as of December 16 are around $80,000. Prior to listing on conventional exchanges, the TRUMP token and many other memecoins could only be purchased through Solana-based DEX platforms, which likely spurred demand for SOL itself, which is needed to pay fees.
The next key event for SOL was the launch of the Libra (LIBRA) memecoin in early February, which was initially supported by Argentine President Javier Milei. In just a few hours at the time of launch, the token's capitalization rose to $4.5 billion and then plummeted by 95%. Milei later withdrew his support for the token, saying he was not aware of the details of the project. Lawsuits were filed against the organizers for launching the Libra token in a “deceptive, manipulative, and fundamentally unfair” manner.
Pump.fun
By mid-December, the prices of all three of the above tokens had fallen by more than 90% from their peak values in 2025. The main beneficiary of the hype surrounding memecoins was the Pump.fum platform, through which more than 70,000 tokens were created per day at its peak in January. The platform's current figure is around 15,000.
The platform's business model is based on receiving commissions for launching tokens, as well as a percentage of trading operations with them. For example, in January, the platform earned about $150 million, according to Dune, with a record daily figure of over $15 million. The current daily level is around $600,000. And since all transactions on Pump.fun take place in Solana, all actions are paid for in SOL tokens, which increases or decreases the demand for cryptocurrency.
After the launch of TRUMP, SOL quotes fell by almost 65% from their peak by April 2025, dropping below $100 for the first time since early 2024. The fall in Solana quotes turned out to be temporary, and by mid-September, the rate had reached another local peak of around $250. This time, the activity coincided with the hype surrounding the launch of the Pump.fun (PUMP) platform token, which reached a record price of around $0.009. At the same time, the platform's peak daily revenue temporarily rose above $2.1 million, according to Dune.
As of December 16, 2025, more than 14 million coins had been created through the Pump.fun platform, making Solana a network with many low-capitalization memecoins. However, there are also large projects: the capitalization of the top 10 crypto assets created on the basis of SOL reaches $4 billion. These include projects such as TRUMP, Bonk (BONK), Pudgy Penguins (PENGU), Pippin (PIPPIN), dogwifhat (WIF), and Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) — all of which are among the top 200 largest crypto assets by capitalization according to Coinmarketcap.
Competition with Ethereum
Against the backdrop of the success of previous years, especially in early 2025, when SOL outperformed Ethereum (ETH) in terms of growth dynamics, many experts spoke of a possible displacement of “ether” from its leading position in the smart contract platform sector.
Starting in 2023, the price of SOL relative to ETH grew by more than 1000% by January 2025 — the SOL to ETH ratio changed from approximately 0.008 to a peak of 0.094. However, since May 2025, the indicator has been falling almost without correction, reaching 0.043 on December 16, according to Tradingview.
With the change in SOL's dynamics relative to ETH, the rhetoric has shifted to the idea that these two assets will demonstrate superiority in different areas: Ethereum as a secure, flexible financial platform, and Solana as a platform for fast, user-centric applications.
Solana Activity Leader
Solana has taken its place among the leaders in terms of active users. According to TokenTerminal, as of December 16, the figure stands at 40.3 million users for the past year, second only to BNB Chain with 61.5 million.
Most of the activity on Solana is trading: five of the ten largest decentralized exchanges by trading volume operate on this network, with a share of almost 30% of the global total ($93 billion over the past 30 days). According to this indicator, the network is the largest, ahead of Ethereum with $60 billion, according to Defillama on December 16.
Solana also became the second largest blockchain network in terms of the number of transactions produced — 123.2 billion over the past 365 days. This is more than 20 times higher than its closest competitor, BNB Chain, with 5.5 billion. According to TokenTerminal, Internet Computer (ICP) ranks first with 145 billion (however, this network does not stand out in any other way except for this metric — for example, data from November shows that the network had just over 5,000 active users).
Institutional demand
In 2025, Solana also became one of the few cryptocurrencies, alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum, to attract demand from institutional investors.
Some companies began adding SOL to their corporate reserves and managed to accumulate about 3% of the total coin supply on the market, or more than $2.3 billion. The largest holder using SOL as a corporate reserve, Forward Industries, owns nearly $900 million worth of reserves. There are already 18 companies on the list — for comparison, in July there were about five with a total SOL balance of about $700 million.
At the end of October, US regulators allowed the launch of SOL-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which have attracted more than $900 million to date. This makes the crypto asset the fourth largest in terms of capital under management by US ETFs, after Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP, according to Sosovalue.
In addition to direct purchases of SOL by institutional investors, such market participants have also shown interest in the network itself. For example, banking giant JPMorgan conducted a transaction on the Solana blockchain to issue $50 million in bonds for Galaxy Digital. The buyers of these securities were the Coinbase crypto exchange and the Franklin Templeton management company. Another example is the launch of the TER token, fully backed by gold, on Solana by the Kingdom of Bhutan.
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