Solana has won the top belt as the blockchain network with the largest share of monthly trading volume from decentralized exchanges so far. However, when the volumes for Ethereum layer 2s are added to the mix, Ethereum still leads Solana’s trading volume by a wide margin.
Solana generated nearly $46.0 billion in monthly trading volume in July, an 18% increase from June when the figure stood at $38.9 billion, data from DefiLlama shows. Solana’s total trading volume in July, which makes up nearly 30% of total trading volume among all blockchain networks, exceeded that of Ethereum’s for the first time in Solana’s four-year history. Ethereum’s volume stood at almost $43.0 billion in July to date.
Solana outpacing Ethereum’s base layer comes after the Solana Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the adoption of the blockchain network, unveiled a new feature at the end of June called “blinks,” short for “blockchain links,” which allows people, bots, and other entities to transact on Solana from social networking platforms and the wider internet.
Read More: Solana’s Growth Metrics, Including Stablecoin Supply, Continue to Take Off
Memecoins, which are the most popular crypto narrative in Q2 2024, according to a July report published by CoinGecko, have also helped bolster Solana’s monthly trading volume. The top trading pairs by volume on Solana’s most popular decentralized exchanges — Raydium and Orca — include dog-based memecoin WIF, cat-inspired token POPCAT, and even a religious coin (SCF) called Church of the Smoking Chicken Fish.
Adding in Ethereum’s L2 Networks
Despite Solana overtaking Ethereum’s base layer in monthly trading volume, Ethereum and its layer 2 networks, such as Arbitrum, Base, and Blast, collectively have a higher share of total trading volume.
Ethereum and its layer 2 networks make up over 50% of all trading volume month-to-date, generating a cumulative $80.2 billion in volume, almost twice that of Solana’s $46.0 billion.
Read More: Ethereum L2 Networks Reach Record High of 7 Million Distinct Addresses
Layer 2 networks are built atop Ethereum and aim to alleviate Ethereum’s scalability issues that can cause expensive transaction fees. L2 networks reduce congestion and help users transact more quickly by moving computation offchain and batching a collection of transactions before posting them to Ethereum’s layer 1 chain.
At presstime, Solana had a total value locked (TVL) of $5.4 billion, while Ethereum and its L2 networks have a combined TVL of more than $67.2 billion.
