Solana’s Remarkable Comeback: DeFi and Meme Coins Drive Growth as SOL Hits $140

Solana (SOL) has had an impressive week, experiencing a remarkable rebound and solidifying its position as one of the strongest performers in the crypto market. After dipping below $100 earlier this year, SOL has surged to $140—a 6% increase this week. This comeback coincides with the network enjoying robust growth across some key metrics, especially in decentralized finance (DeFi) and meme tokens. With a market cap of $72.15 billion, Solana yet again is making headlines, seemingly leaving behind other top-tier cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). A Surge in Activity and Institutional Interest Not just its price performance but also its key network metrics reflect Solana’s resurgence. The Total Value Locked (TVL) on Solana has jumped a staggering 28%, hitting $8.9 billion. This growth suggests that Solana’s DeFi ecosystem is not just alive but also thriving, with way more capital deployed across its dApps. And why not? For traders and developers, Solana is a special network in the sense that its ability to scale efficiently allows for high-speed and low-cost transactions, which are really the essentials of the DeFi ecosystem. There is an active address increase too, a vital sign for any blockchain ecosystem. At the close of Q3, Solana had 4.5 million active addresses. That was up 12.5 percent from the previous quarter. In other words, a growing user base is trading and providing liquidity on Solana’s decentralized exchange. Solana stands as one of the prime performers in the crypto market. When we look at the performance of its immediate rivals, Bitcoin has barely managed to gain 3% over the past week; Ethereum has remained locked in a seemingly interminable range; XRP has plummeted; and yet, Solana has done this: Institutional Adoption and Financial Growth Interest from institutions in Solana has skyrocketed, with large entities like ARK Invest making serious moves. ARK Invest added the 3iQ Solana Staking ETF to its ARKW and ARKF funds, a sign that institutional confidence in the network is growing. Inclusion of Solana in these funds is just another marker in the increasingly lined path of that network to being treated as a legitimate investment asset. Its staking capabilities might be offering higher returns than a lot of things. Along with ARK Invest, Upexi, a tech and e-commerce firm, has expressed plans to build a Solana treasury. Backed by global trading firm GSR, Upexi hopes to construct a $100 million treasury on the Solana blockchain. Stocks surged 600% following this announcement, and people took notice. Upexi, a small e-commerce and tech company, was attempting to do something not many e-commerce and tech companies had tried: issuing a treasury on a blockchain in a major way. When it comes to the amount of value in tokens that are currently being staked, Solana has now, for the first time ever, surpassed Ethereum and is sitting at a staked amount of $54 billion. Performance Metrics and Ecosystem Growth Solana has done even better than Ethereum in bringing in revenue for the first quarter of 2025. Solana brought in $369.5 million in Q1, easily surpassing Ethereum’s $220.8 million and representing a 163% year-over-year increase. The network seems able to scale and bring in substantial revenue, which is necessary for funding ecosystem development. This call-to-arms developer effort seems to be bearing fruit, as it has attracted investment. Why this matters isn’t immediately obvious, but funding development of the ecosystem is crucial. Week in Solana: DeFi TVL and Meme Coins Soar as SOL Hits $140.. $120M bridged to network! SOL outearns ETH in Q1! ARK Invest adds staked SOL! Let’s explore Solana’s remarkable comeback 1/6 pic.twitter.com/1ddZuDQQxr — CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) April 23, 2025 One of the metrics that really sets Solana apart is its daily application revenue, which has reached a spectacular $5 million, easily eclipsing Ethereum’s $1.07 million. This burgeoning revenue stream is a direct reflection of Solana’s ecosystem demand and, in particular, its deep penetration in the DeFi space. But it’s not just DeFi. Solana is increasingly popular with a wider variety of decentralized applications (dApps) of all kinds. Moreover, Solana has witnessed more than $120 million transferred to its network, with 35% of those funds stemming from Ethereum users. This transfer of assets denotes that Ethereum users are seeking to take advantage of Solana’s lower fees and to utilize its faster-timed transactions comped to transfers made directly on the Ethereum blockchain. Solana is surely becoming the platform of choice for these kinds of users. Meme Coins and Ecosystem Momentum Solana’s ecosystem is also benefiting from the rise of meme coins , which have become a strikingly visible part of the broader cryptocurrency market. Tokens like MOTHER (+37%), BOBAOPPA (+28%), and MYRO (+23%) have posted notable price increases on Solana, making them some of the hottest speculative assets on the network. And what do all those pumping prices for new Solana meme coins translate to? Much more on-chain activity and community engagement on the Solana network. So in a bull market where Solana is already one of the favored networks, you have a new layer of activity on top, courtesy of crypto’s most ridiculous tokens. The sector of decentralized physical infrastructure networks on Solana is becoming quite active, with Nosana (+28%) at the forefront. The DePIN projects, which are concerned with infrastructure that can exist independently of centralized entities, are growing in number and seem to offer another reason for the excitement surrounding the Solana ecosystem. When it comes to scalability and infrastructure, Coinbase has laid out plans to scale Solana’s infrastructure by five times. This proclamation, in and of itself, helps firmly establish Solana as a key player in the blockchain space. It states, in not so many words, that Solana needs to be a key player—in part, because every key player must have a solid infrastructure—if the network of decentralized applications built on Solana is to have a shot at decent odds in the sorts of banking and fintech uses for which they are intended. Solana’s Future Outlook Solana keeps surging in value and activity and clearly is one well-positioned blockchain network for the future. It has seen the adoption of big institutions, a skyrocketing total value locked, and a possible (and probable) ecosystem of DeFi applications, meme coins, and infrastructure projects. In all these ways and more, Solana remains a totally open and public network, with the ability to outperform some other top cryptocurrencies in key metrics. Those metrics include revenue generation, transaction volume, and the apparent interest of big entities in actually using the network. Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services. Follow us on Twitter @nulltxnews to stay updated with the latest Crypto, NFT, AI, Cybersecurity, Distributed Computing, and Metaverse news !

Source: NullTx