Solana is Having its Best Month Ever

Solana is having its most bullish month on record, with major metrics from trading volume, to token price and total value locked, all trending up.

Decentralized exchanges on Solana reached $5.1 billion in monthly volume for November, according to DefiLlama, marching past its previous peak of $2.8 billion during November 2022. Weekly volumes also climbed to a new high of $2.1 billion, outperforming the same week last year by more than 33%.

Both previous highs occurred as FTX began to collapse, throwing the blockchain into what could have been an existential threat as its main backer crashed, a risk it has–seemingly– overcome.

Crypto users can begin to breathe a sigh of relief that interest seems to be slowly but surely returning to the market. If a protocol like Solana, which suffered a near death blow due to its entanglement with FTX, along multiple outages over the past years, can begin posting these numbers, leading the way for the broader digital asset industry, then good things might be around the corner.

To top it off, blue-chip assets are usually first movers, meaning Solana’s encouraging November could eventually splash out into mid cap and smaller projects–sparking a much-awaited departure from the protracted bear market.

Ecosystem Projects

The pickup in DEX volume, says Kunal Goel, senior research analyst for Messari is typically highly correlated with price for ecosystem projects.

“The relationship is even stronger,” he told The Defiant, when projects aren’t listed on large centralized exchanges–as is the case for many Solana projects.

Renewed interest in DEX usage from users on Solana isn’t isolated to the network, however. Since mid-September, decentralized exchanges have been trending upwards across the crypto ecosystem. Over $26 billion was handled across these platforms, its highest since the beginning of March earlier this year.

Ethereum leads the way for volume along all timeframes, handling $25.97 billion worth of trades through the month of November. Second place belonged to Arbitrum, with $10.35 billion (less than half of the top chain), although on daily timeframes it was overtaken Wednesday morning by Solana.

SOL Rallies

Alongside the positive outlook from DEX usage, Solana’s native token is also gaining steam. Defying its tag as an unregistered security by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SOL has also been trending upwards, hitting a yearly high last week of $65.42 on Nov. 16, as per Coingecko.

Recent price action took Solana to overtake two stalwarts of the top ten crypto assets in terms of market cap, Cardano and USDC, although the latter has reclaimed its place at number 6, one spot ahead of SOL.

Solana TVL Climbs

Solana is also in up only mode across all of its network metrics. Total Value Locked has skyrocketed on Solana over the past month, jumping from $427 million on Nov. 1st, to $576 million as of today. Over the same time period, daily volume has also picked up steam, spiking from $241 million to $353 million as of yesterday.

That said, SOL has taken a hit over the past couple of days, changing hands today at $55.26–perhaps due to the SEC’s latest enforcement against cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, a lawsuit that once again, labeled the token an unregistered security.

Project Pipeline

Fueling Solana’s numbers could be the plethora of projects lining up to be launched in the upcoming months.

According to Goel, established and new DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure) projects are setting their eyes on Solana. Namely, Goel said, Helium and Render are finding the network “fitting” for their use-cases, also drawing the attention of newer projects such as Hivemapper and Nosana.

Adding to the mix is the much-awaited launch of Firedancer, a new validator client that is touted to increase Solana’s throughput to 1 million transactions per second. And last but not least, airdrops like PYTH, which took place yesterday with a $75 million claim to over 38,000 users, are also expected to help the network attract more users and capital.

Fewer Outages

For Matias Barrios, a security researcher on Solana, the network has been receiving a much needed upgrade under the hood, leading to fewer outages (none in Q2 and Q3), and more bullishness within the community.

As he told The Defiant, the widespread technical changes that are taking place–along with the much-needed arrival of Firedancer–will provide “more resiliency, improved uptime, and a better established blockchain” as the bull market kicks off, Barrios concluded.