Solana
Solana is a proof-of-stake blockchain whose native token is SOL, and since 2024 it has been the main chain for memecoin trading, including most of the activity the scene calls the trenches.
History[edit]
FTX collapse
Solana was closely tied to Sam Bankman-Fried; The Block counted SOL among the "Sam Coins" associated with him. When FTX collapsed, SOL fell 35% in a day to about $18 on 9 November 2022.[1]
Bonk and the 2023 recovery
Bonk, a dog-themed memecoin made as a joke by anonymous developers after the FTX and Alameda collapse, launched on Solana in December 2022. By 15 December 2023 it had risen nearly 1,000% in a month to a market value of about $1.7 billion, which Bloomberg Law presented as a sign of Solana's recovery from FTX.[2] The same rally sold out Solana Mobile's Saga phone in the US that day: each buyer could claim 30 million BONK, worth about $830 at the time, against a phone price of $599 (cut from $999 in August). Solana Labs said 20,000 Sagas had been produced.[3]
Memecoin chain
A record number of new tokens appeared on Solana exchanges in the first quarter of 2024, much of it from launchpads such as pump.fun.[4] In 2024 memecoin apps earned $509 million in revenue through November, the most of any Solana app category, according to Syndica; their monthly revenue rose from about $600,000 in January to $183 million in November.[5]
How it works[edit]
Transactions pay a small base fee plus an optional priority fee that bids for faster inclusion. During congestion in April 2024, The Block reported that many Solana apps did not set priority fees, so their transactions were delayed or dropped; a March 2024 Solana Labs post recommended dynamic priority fees.[4]
Notable events[edit]
April 2024 congestion
In early April 2024 the network was congested by spam from bots trying to get ahead of ordinary users and by trading in newly launched memecoins. Solana Foundation's Austin Federa said bug fixes would roll out over the following week, and version 1.18 was meant to make transaction scheduling more deterministic.[4]
TRUMP launch
The launch of TRUMP on 18 January 2025 and MELANIA on 19 January drew heavy traffic before the US inauguration. Some Coinbase users waited hours for Solana transfers; chief executive Brian Armstrong said Coinbase had not anticipated the surge and was scaling its infrastructure. Helius chief executive Mert Mumtaz said the problem was not with the chain itself, and Solana had recorded no outage since 6 February 2024, though some transactions failed.[6] Moonshot reported more than 200,000 new on-chain users after the TRUMP launch.[6]
Timeline[edit]
- 2022-11-09: SOL falls 35% to about $18 as FTX collapses[1]
- 2022-12: Bonk launches on Solana[2]
- 2023-12-15: Saga phones sell out in the US amid the BONK rally[3]
- 2024-02-06: last Solana outage before the 2025 TRUMP launch[6]
- 2024-04-08: The Block reports developers working on memecoin- and bot-driven congestion[4]
- 2025-01-18: TRUMP launches on Solana[6]
- 2025-01-20: Coinbase Solana transfers delayed for hours[6]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Solana, FTT and Serum prices plummet on back of FTX collapse, The Block, 2022-11-09
- ^ Dog-Themed Memecoin Jump Highlights Solana Recovery From FTX, Bloomberg Law, 2023-12-15
- ^ Solana Weighs Demand for Saga Phones After Sellout Amid BONK Boom, Decrypt, 2023-12-15
- ^ Solana developers rally to combat network congestion, The Block, 2024-04-08
- ^ Solana DApp revenue reaches $365M in November 2024, led by memecoins, Cointelegraph, 2024-12-19
- ^ Coinbase Solana transactions delayed amid memecoin frenzy, Cointelegraph, 2025-01-20