Solana DeFi Trading Hits All-Time High Amid Meme Coin Frenzy

Trading volume across Solana decentralized exchanges (DEXs) reached a new monthly all-time high mark after topping $58.4 billion in March, according to data from DeFiLlama.

The previous high mark was nearly $28.5 billion in December 2023. The record trading month comes amid an ongoing meme coin frenzy on Solana. Over the past month, popular meme coins like Dogwifhat (WIF) and Bonk (BONK) saw substantial trading, plus new coins like Book of Meme (BOME) and Slerf (SLERF) drove significant action.

Topical meme coins tied to politicians like Donald Trump and Joe Biden also popped in March. On Thursday, following the sentencing of FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, multiple meme coins spun up to piggyback on the news, surging over 30,000% in value before plummeting. Solana meme coin “Som Bonkmon Fraud” spiked 15,000% with $24 million in trading volume—before dropping 90% the next day.

Solana DEX Orca has dominated the space lately, leading the rally with $3.6 billion in trading volume in the last seven days, followed by Raydium with $1.73 billion and Phoenix with $1.6 billion.

One of the biggest beneficiaries from this surge in activity on Solana DEXs is Jupiter, a decentralized exchange aggregator whose native token JUP is currently priced at $1.66, up 24.9% for the week, according to CoinGecko.

Last month, Jupiter co-founder Meow said the DEX would donate fees to Slerf pre-sale buyers after the developer accidentally burned $10 million worth of funds raised in presales for the meme coin.

Other Solana meme coins starting April strong include Book of Meme (BOME), up 16% in the last 24 hours to $0.0166, and Popcat (POPCAT), which jumped 45% to a price above $0.33.

New Solana meme coin favorite Dogwifhat ended March up 43.9% at $4.04, and Bonk (BONK) ended the month up 1.3%. However, Dogwifhat and Bonk started April down 14.3% and 8.9%, respectively.

While trading volume is up and meme coins continue to cause a buying frenzy on the Solana network, SOL itself has started April down 4% over the last 24 hours at a current price just below $189. Solana surged past a $90 billion market capitalization in March, but it’s down to about $84 billion as of this writing.