After it rolled out a new feature called Blinks, Solana reached an almost two-year high in the number of daily transactions processed.
According to blockchain analytics firm Artemis, Solana facilitated almost 42 million transactions on Wednesday, a roughly 81% jump from the start of the year when the figure stood at 23.1 million.
The last time Solana handled more than 40 million transactions in a day was back in Aug. 2022, months before the collapse of FTX, which nearly decimated Solana, since it had close ties to FTX’s cofounder, Sam Bankman-Fried. Solana has since recovered to become the center of much of recent crypto activity, such as the memecoin craze, with coins like BONK, WIF and MOTHER taking off.
In August 2022, the blockchain’s native cryptocurrency SOL was trading at around $40 compared to $147 today, data from CoinGecko shows.
Arrival of Blinks
Solana breaking the 40 million daily transaction threshold occurred after Solana developers unveiled “blinks,” short for “blockchain links,” which are new Solana primitives that enable people to turn onchain actions such as voting, donating, and swapping into a URL link that can be shared on social media and the wider internet web.
As a result, traditional web2 internet sites can become a place where users can initiate onchain Solana transactions.
“Solana is having its YouTube moment when they allowed videos to be embedded anywhere on the internet. Blinks will embed Solana transactions everywhere on the internet,” wrote Diego Perez de Ayala, the managing partner for investment firm Frictionless Capital who also goes by @SolanaLegend on X.
In the past 24 hours, wallet transfers alone consumed over $1 million in gas, making it the largest gas-consuming category more than the gas consumption of DeFi, memecoins, and infrastructure protocols combined, per Artemis.
These wallet transfers stem from Solana’s System Program, which is responsible for managing the network’s core functionalities and operations such as creating new accounts and processing transfer instructions, Solana’s documents state.
Van Eck Filing for SOL ETF
On Thursday, Van Eck, a global investment manager with $101.9 billion in assets under management and also an issuer of a spot BTC ETF, filed for a spot Solana ETF in the US, a move that also helped propel SOL’s price upward.
According to CoinGecko, SOL was trading around $137 when the day started and has since jumped to $147 following Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at Van Eck, announcing the firm’s filing for a SOL ETF.
