Key Points
- Solana’s ecosystem is rapidly rising with SOL being surrounded by bullish metrics.
- The upcoming Solana airdrops include Nyan Heroes, Parcl, Kamino, and Drift – promising alternatives to enjoying the ecosystem, apart from memecoin investments.
The volatile crypto industry recently saw the Solana ecosystem explode with popularity and all of its memecoins going out of control. Following all the hectic moves, there are some slow but sure moves back to the Base ecosystem.
Solana ecosystem is surrounded by bullish metrics
According to the latest reports coming from Google Trends, the global interest in Solana is on the rise and it just hit a five-year peak.
Both retail and institutional investors have shown extreme engagement in the ecosystem, and one of the most important factors that have been driving this frenzy is centered around the Solana-based meme coins and their growing popularity.
The huge memecoin craze managed to result in Solana flipping Ethereum for the 24-trading volume. In the past 24 hours, Solana saw $1 billion more in trading volume compared to Ethereum.
Zooming out, we can definitely see things looking even more impressive than before:
As you can see in the graph above, Solana had a massive volume in the past week weeks. If you’re wondering about the impact that all these moves had on Solana’s price, well, for a short period of time, SOL even flipped BNB as the 4th biggest coin in the crypto market.
SOL’s price crossed $200 before it faced a bearish correction.
Solana’s bullish metrics
There are some bullish metrics that are worth mentioning when we bring up Solana.
First of all, there’s the number of new addresses that enter the Solana ecosystem. This spiked in March, rising from 391,000 to 1.16 million – a jump of almost 400%.
The total fees on Solana also saw a spike following the rise in activity. The overall fees jumped from $378,200 to over $5 million in March by now.
The total monthly active addresses on Solana have already crossed 20 million this month. Who knows where they’re headed by the end of March?
Solana’s DeFi TVL is the last, but definitely not the least important metric we have to address. The DeFi sector benefitted from the injection of liquidity, and the TVL in Solana jumped by approximately 480% from $671.2 million to $3.88 billion since the beginning of 2024.
Remember when, back in November 2021, Solana’s TVL peaked at about $10 billion? Could Solana rally to gather that much liquidity and reach new highs?
Solana, the memecoins’ shelter
Solana became the go-to blockchain for meme enthusiasts, and during the past weeks, the number of memecoins launched on the ecosystem exploded.
Recent Solana airdrops are also performing pretty great, and this suggests a rising interest and a liquidity influx in the ecosystem. The enthusiasm around the airdrops funnels a frenzy around memecoins.
Some of the best performers among Solana memecoins include Wif, Bonk, Bome, Myro, Popcat and more.
The organic growth of Wif has exceeded everyone’s expectations. Recently, a photo of the original Dogwifhat meme was sold as an Ethereum NFT for a whopping $4.3 million, setting a new record. The owners of the dog, Achi, who captured the endearing image in 2018, will receive the proceeds from the sale. In another impressive show of support, the Wif community raised over $670,000 through a fundraiser to advertise on the Las Vegas Sphere.
New memecoins showed huge speed just like the case of Slerf. Some other coins focused on political memes like Joe Boden, Donald Tremp, and Elizabeth Whoren.
We’ve already discussed Slerf’s interesting and insane trajectory after the developer’s error which resulted in the destruction of its supply and a $10M loss for investors. Even so, Slerf managed to defy all expectations and surged in trading volume to more than $7 billion.
Considering the fact that Slerf is barely a week old, this is quite an achievement.
The memecoin ICOs represent another factor that drove the hype around the Solana ecosystem to new peaks, bringing us down the memory lane back to the ICO boom from 2017.
There has been a surge in presales for memecoin launches on Solana, with 33 presales conducted since March 12, raising over 796K SOL.
Presales are becoming more popular due to the fear of missing out (FOMO) on the chance to invest in a new project. This has led to significant price increases for some coins, such as the Book of Memes presale, which saw a surge of over 1 million percent in less than two days.
However, investing in presales carries risks because the person who collects the funds has total control over them. As an example, the Slerf case shows that investor funds can be burned.
Taking advantage of new Solana opportunities
It’s more than obvious that the memecoin madness will continue. Meanwhile, here’s how you can also take advantage of some of the best opportunities that the Solana ecosystem has to offer.
Nyan Heroes
9 Lives Interactive, the Singapore-based game development studio, has raised $3M to fund the global release of Nyan Heroes, a hero shooter game featuring assets from the Solana blockchain.
https://twitter.com/nyanheroes/status/1763137637270094323?utm_source=cryptopragmatist.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=memecoin-mania-hits-solana
The game is coming to the Epic Games Store for a limited-time test run from March 26th to April 9th. During this early access phase, players can participate in a special program where they can earn rewards by playing. These rewards come in the form of in-game tokens called MEOWS, which can be later converted to $NYAN tokens.
Here’s how to join the fun:
- Follow the link below (link not provided) to learn more and participate in the program.
- Use the code M6Labs to get bonus rewards!
Over 200,000 players have already signed up, representing more than 120,000 unique Solana wallets. Don’t miss your chance to be a part of it.
Parcl
Parcl is giving away millions in tokens! Parcl is a platform where you can virtually trade real estate and potentially earn rewards. They’re launching a new token (called PRCL) in April, and they’re planning to give away a significant portion (potentially worth $160 million) to users who participate in their program.
Here’s what you can do to get involved:
- Head over to Parcl to learn more and see if it’s for you.
- Use the code m6labs when you sign up to get a bonus!
Here are some additional details:
- Parcl uses its own data to track real estate prices in certain areas.
- You can trade virtual real estate with up to 10x leverage (meaning you can control a larger position with a smaller investment, but also magnify potential losses).
- Since launching in November, Parcl has facilitated over $210 million in total trading volume.
Kamino
Kamino is a platform built on Solana that allows you to lend, borrow, and invest your cryptocurrency in various ways. They offer different “vaults” that let you use different DeFi strategies.
You can earn rewards and potentially participate in governance.
Kamino recently launched its own token, $KMNO. By using Kamino’s products and services, you can earn points that will be converted into $KMNO tokens during an upcoming airdrop. Owning $KMNO tokens may also give you a say in future decisions about the platform (though this is not guaranteed).
Here are some additional details:
- Kamino uses its own data to track real estate market prices.
- The airdrop is planned for sometime between late March and early June 2024, with potentially more airdrops happening later.
Drift
You can earn rewards by trading on Drift Protocol.
Drift Protocol is a platform on the Solana blockchain where you can trade cryptocurrency derivatives called “perpetual swaps.” This allows you to speculate on price movements of crypto assets using stablecoins as collateral.
Here’s what Drift offers:
- Perpetual trading: Go long (betting an asset’s price will rise) or short (betting the price will fall) with leverage, which can amplify both gains and losses. Leverage can range from 2x to potentially much higher (be aware, this increases risk significantly).
- Short-term strategies and hedging: Use Drift for short-term trading strategies or to hedge other cryptocurrency positions.
Earn rewards while you trade:
Drift is currently running an airdrop program. By using Drift to trade perpetual swaps, you can earn points that will be converted into their token ($DRFT) during the airdrop.
To get started, head over to Drift Protocol to learn more and see if it’s right for you.
Memecoins or the “Peak Degeneracy”
Such as huge wave of enthusiasm that has been built around the memecoins led to something called “peak degeneracy” with huge amounts of capital flowing into memecoins presales without too much guarantee of return.
Such a trend only raises more questions regarding the risks and sustainability that a re associated with speculative investments.
Such heightened activity led to significant congestion on the Solana network, with average ping times ranging from 20-40 seconds and the ping losses being around 30-50%.
The congestion persisted for multiple days due to a large number of non-vote transactions failing.
This problem was made worse by excessive amounts of spam and Miner Extractable Value (MEV) activities associated with meme coin transactions. As a result, the failure rate of transactions ranged from 50% to 80%.
Ledger also shared a post regarding the congestion issues on Solana:
Even amidst all these issues, Solana continues to gather popularity among crypto enthusiasts, attracting substantial user engagement and liquidity.
