It may not be altcoin season just yet, but one of them has already doubled Bitcoin’s percentage gains over the last year.

Solana’s native token SOL is up 580% over a one-year period, gaining 13% in the last 24 hours to trade at $84 at the time of writing.

Daily trading volume for the token was up a whopping 108% to $3.9 billion, making it the third most traded crypto asset outside of Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins like USDT and USDC.

Read more: Solana Mobile Is Making a Second Crypto Smartphone

Activity on the blockchain has also picked up significantly over the last week, with data from DeFiLlama showing that decentralized exchange (DEX) volume on Solana surpassed Ethereum over the last seven days.


Earlier this week, Unchained reported that Solana had taken the lead in daily stablecoin transfer volume, which has grown 600% to $16.6 billion since the start of December.

Institutional data platform Artemis attributed the uptick in the blockchain’s usage to growth of memecoins like BONK and WIF, which created more room for retail activity evidenced by the high number of daily active addresses on the network since the summer of 2022.

The dog-themed memecoin BONK now has a market capitalization of $1.2 billion, and those cashing out of their holdings will typically convert their coins back into SOL creating a fair amount of buying pressure. 

Read more: Paxos Bringing Stablecoin Issuance on Solana, Diversifying Beyond Ethereum

It is worth noting that the bankruptcy estate in charge of crypto exchange FTX has been approved to sell its $3.4 billion in crypto holdings, of which $1.16 billion is in SOL.

Earlier this month, a wallet associated with FTX unstaked $90 million worth of SOL and sent it to Coinbase, presumably with the intention to sell, meaning that the token has been able to withstand a large amount of selling pressure coming from the exchange’s liquidation plans.