TL;DR
Surpassing Ethereum: Solana’s stablecoin trading volume has consistently outperformed Ethereum’s, with a notable peak on March 30 where Solana’s volume was $97.5 billion compared to Ethereum’s $9.3 billion.
Market Resilience: Despite FTX’s estate selling off its Solana holdings at a discount, SOL shows robust performance in the stablecoin market, maintaining a high volume of transactions.
Price Fluctuations: SOL’s price has seen recent growth, reaching $208 on March 18, though it experienced a dip to $167 on March 20; it’s currently trading at $195, marking a 2% increase over the past week.
Due to current market trends, Solana has recently been grappling with surpassing the $200 threshold. A significant downward pressure on these market fundamentals is the recent news of the insolvent cryptocurrency exchange FTX’s estate offloading its Solana holdings worth $7.65 billion at a 68% markdown from the prevailing market price.
Nonetheless, on-chain metrics suggest that SOL maintains its robust performance, especially in the realm of stablecoins. The volume of stablecoin transactions on the Solana network indicates that it consistently processes more transactions daily than Ethereum, recording an additional $411.2 billion in trading volume over the previous week.
Artemis, a platform for crypto on-chain analytics, has underscored the escalating use of stablecoins on Solana. According to on-chain data, the daily trading volume of stablecoins on this blockchain has consistently exceeded that of Ethereum throughout most of March, particularly from March 9 onwards. This disparity in trading volume was further amplified over the last week, as Artemis pointed out in a social media post.
For instance, on March 30, Solana recorded a stablecoin trading volume of $97.5 billion, in contrast to Ethereum’s volume of $9.3 billion. The largest discrepancy occurred on March 28, when the altcoin logged a trading volume of $112.9 billion, which is $95.3 billion more than Ethereum’s $17.6 billion. As a result, Solana has now become dominant in the stablecoin market, representing more than 80% of its trading volume.
MEV Bots and Phoenix: Driving Forces in Solana’s Volume
Artemis reports that the majority of the volume is due to the activity of MEV bots and Phoenix, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. MEV bots, or Maximum Extractable Value bots, are automated programs designed to monitor blockchain networks for potentially profitable transactions and execute them automatically. These bots have shown significant activity on the Solana blockchain, continuously searching for profitable arbitrage opportunities.
The Solana ecosystem is rapidly growing, as shown by the increase in prices and on-chain indicators. SOL, the native cryptocurrency of Solana, has seen significant growth in the last week, reversing the previous week’s downward trend.
SOL is trading at $195, a decrease of 0.60% in the last 24 hours, but an increase of 2% over the past week. The price of Solana had previously reached $208 on March 18. However, despite the bullish momentum, the price fell to a low of $167 on March 20 as the upward trend could not be sustained.
