Solana: DEX volume falls, but a silver lining emerges

• Solana’s DEX volume fell behind zkSync.
• DeFi TVL and network fees, however, have climbed in the last month.

Amid the exploit of one of its leading decentralized exchanges (DEXes), Solana [SOL] has seen a decline in the total volume of transactions executed through its on-chain DEXes in the last week. 

Realistic or not, here’s SOL’s market cap in BTC’s terms

For context, during that period, Layer-2 (L2) scaling solution zkSync, despite having a much lower total value locked (TVL) and DEX count, recorded more transaction volume than Solana. 

Zk Sync did more dex volume than Solana last week and Pulse Chain did more than Avalanche pic.twitter.com/4clej4w12q

— Size Chad (@SizeChad) August 8, 2023

The ugly…

A broader look at Solana’s DEX activity revealed a general decline in network activity in the last month. According to data from Artemis, the network recorded $47 million in DEX volume in the past 30 days.

This represented a 5% decline and a 95% gap from Ethereum’s [ETH] $1.09 billion during the same period.

Source: Artemis

The drop in transaction volume is attributed to the decrease in user activity on the network. Last month, the count of daily active addresses on Solana totaled 241,749, registering a 12% decline. 

Interestingly, though transaction volume and active address count fell, the daily count of completed transactions rallied. In fact, Solana registered the highest count of daily transactions in the last month, per data from Artemis.

Despite declining by 12%, this totaled 15.29 million transactions within the period under review.

Source: Artemis

The good…

It hasn’t been all bad news for Solana in the last month. Data from DefiLlama revealed an uptick in the network’s total value locked (TVL) in the past 30 days. At $664.97 million at press time, the L1 blockchain has seen a 15% jump in TVL.

Network fees have also climbed during the period under review. With $1.5 million brought in last month, Solana has seen a 48% jump in transaction fees.

Data from Token Terminal revealed that this resulted in a corresponding uptick in network revenue during the same period. 

Source: Token Terminal

SOL has thrived in the last month

While its decentralized finance vertical deals with a drop in DEX volume, SOL’s value has climbed by 12% in the last 30 days. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the altcoin exchanged hands at $24.42 at press time.

Read Solana’s [SOL] Price Prediction 2023-24

Price growth may have resulted from increased positive funding rates across crypto exchanges during that period. Data from Coinglass showed that since mid-July, SOL’s funding rates on exchanges have been positive.

This meant that all traders in the alt’s futures market have since placed bets in favor of a price jump.

Source: Coinglass