According to U.Today, Solana, currently the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has shown significant growth in the first quarter of 2024. A report by on-chain analytics firm Messari reveals that Solana's average daily spot DEX volume surged by 319% to $1.5 billion over the last quarter, with DeFi volume also seeing a substantial increase. The report also indicates that Solana has become a popular platform for retail users.
The majority of the increase in DEX volumes was due to meme coin trading. Solana experienced an uptick in activity across its ecosystem during the first quarter, leading to the launch of new projects and a rise in developer interest. Following major SOL and stablecoin pairs, SLERF-SOL and WIF-SOL had the fourth and fifth-highest token pair trading volume in Q1. Other meme coins in the top 15 by trading volume included BONK and WEN.
Telegram bots have become a popular trading platform for retail consumers. The average daily active addresses of Solana's Telegram bot saw a 573% quarter-on-quarter increase to 45,000. These bots accounted for around 5% of the total quarterly volume, more than double the previous quarter.
Solana's stablecoin market capitalization saw a 55% quarter-on-quarter increase to $2.8 billion, making it the fifth-largest among all networks. This growth was primarily driven by USDC, whose Solana market capitalization increased by 111% quarter-on-quarter to $2 billion. Solana now has the second-highest USDC total of any network, second only to Ethereum.
Solana's DeFi TVL grew by 232% quarter-on-quarter to $4.9 billion, placing it fourth among networks. SOL remained a market leader after its breakout in Q4'23, maintaining its position as the fifth most valuable token on the market, behind only BTC, ETH, USDT, and BNB. SOL's market capitalization remains at all-time highs, having peaked at $77 billion in the previous cycle. Solana ended Q1 of 2024 with a market worth of $86.4 billion, a 97% increase from the previous quarter. At the time of writing, SOL was down 6.56% in the last 24 hours to $175 and down 32% from its all-time high of $260 attained in November 2021.