Reposted to PANews: Solana’s Authentic and Fake Prosperity Survey: Robots account for 70% of transactions, Meme data declines seriously Author: Frank, PANews
“Discussions about the true prosperity of Solana have also attracted a lot of attention on social media. Based on long-term attention to the Solana ecosystem, PANews has also conducted some data surveys on the true and false prosperity of Solana.”
As the data on Solana's chain is catching up with Ethereum in an all-round way, the topic that Solana will surpass Ethereum is gradually heating up. At the same time, the discussion about Solana's true prosperity has also attracted a lot of attention on social media. Recently, many KOLs have published articles arguing that Solana’s data boom is not real. In summary, the controversy over Solana on social media focuses on the following points. 1. The proliferation of robots 2. Inflated transaction volume data 3. The MEV problem 4. The problem of financial losses 5. The problem of additional issuance of SOL tokens.
Based on long-term attention to the Solana ecosystem, PANews also conducted some data investigations into the true and false prosperity of Solana.
Robots are rampant, nearly 70% of transactions come from robots
Regarding the proliferation of bots on the Solana chain. Recently, multiple KOLs have stated on social media that Solana’s on-chain transactions are filled with robots. Researcher Dan Smith released data on July 29 showing that Solana’s weekly transaction fees and MEV revenue exceeded Ethereum for the first time.
If you frequently trade MEME coins you will find that this situation is very serious on pump.fun. Randomly open a token trading page of pump.fun, and you will find that as shown in the figure below (the exclamation mark at the end of the list is robot trading), robot trading has accounted for the majority of transactions.
However, it is not easy to identify robot transactions and data, and there is a lack of official release of such data.
Flip Research believes this ratio is as high as 93%: “Considering the unusually high transaction to user ratio, and the number of wash transactions/coin washes on the chain, it seems that the vast majority of transactions are unnatural. On the main Ethereum L2 , the highest daily trading user ratio is 15.0 times that on Blast (the platform's handling fees are also very low, and users are using Blast S2). As a rough comparison, if we assume the real SOL trading and user ratio with Blast. Similarly, this would mean that more than 93% of transactions and, by extension, fees on Solana are unnatural."
But this data may not be correct. PANews randomly found 10 relatively active coins on Pump.fun and analyzed the last 1,000 transactions of these coins. The set algorithm performs machine judgment in two aspects: buying and selling within a short period of time (less than 10 seconds) or repeated transactions of the same amount with the same address that appear in the transaction. After analysis, it was found that among a total of 8,268 transactions for these 10 tokens, 80.85% of the transactions came from robot transactions, and the transaction volume of real users was less than 20%. The tokens with the highest proportion of robots accounted for 99.5%. On average, each robot traded 159 times in this range, while the average for real users was 1.99.
But this does not mean that this is the case for all trading pairs on Solana. Subsequently, PANews analyzed the last 10,000 transactions of the 10 tokens with higher market capitalization, such as $WIF, JUP, POPCAT, BOME, MEW, etc. Among these mature tokens, we found that the proportion of robots has dropped significantly, accounting for 50.73%. The higher proportions are $WIF (81.6%), POPCAT (87.5%), and MEW (88%), all For MEME coins, the robot trading ratio of JUP (Jupiter governance token) is 51%, and the robot trading ratio of KAMA is only 27.3%.
Tokens that have not completed the liquidity curve are still traded on Pump.fun, while tokens that have completed the liquidity curve will be listed on Raydium. Therefore, the above two comparison methods can also be regarded as newly listed tokens on Pump.fun and those that have completed The liquidity curve is on the line, which is a microcosm of the comparison between DEX tokens such as Raydium. Judging from the current distribution ratio of token trading volume, pump.fun’s transactions account for approximately 53% of Solana DEX (data on August 8). Based on this ratio, Solana’s daily trading volume accounts for approximately 66% Trading for robots. From this point of view, real users currently prefer tokens with higher market capitalization and stable prices rather than new ones.
PANews then analyzed the transaction data of Pump.fun's top three tokens by market value when they were first created and found that 2 months ago, the proportion of robots on Pump.fun was only about 35%, and the actual number of user transactions and transactions The numbers are much higher than at the current stage.
The average daily number of real user transactions is about 16, which is not much different from Ethereum L2
What is the average daily transaction volume of users on the Solana chain? Flip Research wrote that Solana’s daily transaction volume per user is as high as 217 times. Much higher than other public chains.
In fact, Solana’s transactions are divided into voting transactions and non-voting transactions. The data source tokenterminal obtained by Flip Research uses the sum of voting transactions and non-voting transactions, while normal user transactions are mainly concentrated in non-voting transactions, and the data magnitudes of the two usually differ by about 10 times.
According to data on August 6, there were 34.8 million non-voting transactions, 987,000 active users, and an average of 35 transactions per user.
In addition, according to PANews estimates, 13% of the current active addresses are bot addresses, and 86% are real users.
Based on the transaction volume of 34.26 million and DAU 822,000 addresses on August 8, the number of real user transactions was approximately 11.3058 million, the number of real users was approximately 706,900, and the average number of real user transactions was approximately 16. This figure is much higher than Ethereum’s approximately 3.37 transactions and Base’s approximately 6.18 transactions, but similar to Arbitrum’s approximately 12.39 transactions and lower than Blas’ 30.8 transactions (data as of August 6). From this perspective, excluding robot trading, the gap between Solana’s real user activity and other Ethereum L2s is not obvious.
MEME data has declined seriously
Another data also illustrates the apparent prosperity on Solana. Judging from the number of tokens issued every day, Solana’s new SPL token issuance has not experienced a sharp decline and remains at 20,000 tokens issued daily. about. But looking at the details of the data, in early July, a total of 71,000 tokens were issued on pump.fun, and 5,187 tokens were listed on Raydium that week (pump.fun will automatically be listed on Raydium after it meets liquidity). By August 5 In the week of July 2, pump.fun issued a total of 55,000 tokens, while Raydium only had 1,850 new tokens online during the same period. This data shows that the number of tokens issued on Pump.fun has not dropped too much, but the proportion that can be successfully listed on Raydium is getting lower and lower. It is currently no more than 3%, and in early July this figure was about 7.3% . On August 12, according to Dune panel data, Pump.fun issued 11,796 Meme tokens in the past 24 hours, and only 157 were finally listed on Raydium, accounting for only 1.33%.
In addition, the number of New Token Accounts (newly created token accounts) on the Solana chain has also experienced a sharp decline recently. On July 20, the number was 12.24 million, and on August 8, it dropped to 6.67 million. Nearly half the range. This data can be understood as the total number of newly created token holding addresses on that day. The number of new tokens created by Solana every day has not decreased, but the total number of addresses holding the tokens has decreased, indicating that the average number of holders of each new token has dropped significantly. Real users are leaving the new MEME coin as bots grab trading pools.
The validator becomes the beneficiary of false transactions
At the same time, Solana validators are making a lot of money from robot transactions. Dan Smith revealed that on July 29, the total fees incurred were $5.5 million, the highest amount in the past three months. 58% of the value comes from MEV tips and 37% from priority transaction fees. He believes: “MEV will only proceed when it is profitable, that is, as long as retailers continue to chase MEME, MEV will proceed. Once MEME starts to cool down, MEV fee income will also collapse.”
On a website that specializes in counting sandwich attacks, PANews made rough statistics. There are about 16 to 20 sandwich attacks identified in one minute. That translates to at least 23,000 sandwich attacks per day. It was previously reported that the most notorious address made over $30 million in 2 months, but now there appear to be more sandwich attackers than before. (Related reading: “Snatching” $30 Million in 2 Months, Solana’s Biggest Sandwich Attacker Makes $570,000 a Day, Drawing Public Outrage). To combat this, 82% of transactions currently add a priority fee (which circumvents sandwich attacks), but this increases transaction costs for the average user.
Financial losses are unsubstantiated
In addition, the issue of financial losses and inflation rates was raised by KOL Bear Cookie.eth. He said: Solana has been losing money, and financial data shows that each quarter increased from $143 million in the second quarter of 2023 to $9.56 in the second quarter of 2024. billion dollars. Regarding this issue, another KOL, Riyue Xiaochu, further explained, "This is not an increase in losses. But this is just a data illusion caused by pricing in US dollars. "The average price of SOL in Q2 of 2023 was around US$25. The Q4 price is relatively large due to the pullback. Calculated based on the average price of 50 US dollars, this year’s Q2 is basically 160 US dollars. According to a rough calculation, sol will issue an additional 6 million coins per quarter. So simply multiply it, and Q2 in 2023 will be 150 million US dollars. In Q4 it was US$300 million, and in Q2 this year it was US$960 million.”
In addition, PANews found during the investigation that the Solana Foundation has not actually disclosed its current holdings and financial data. The only online source for this part of financial data is Coin98 Analytics, but the company has not disclosed the source of this data.
Regarding the issue of additional issuance of SOL tokens, Riyue Xiaochu explained that the Messari data quoted by Little Bear Biscuit.eth refers to new flows. This part of the flow may be tokens unlocked by the foundation and usually do not flow to the market.
Regarding the inflation of SOL, according to data from solanacompass, the current inflation rate of SOL is 5.1%, and there is no inflation rate of 15%.
Discussions about Solana may continue. Overall, the state of the Solana ecology is not as severe as some opinions believe. According to The Funding report, some crypto fund managers are actively increasing their positions in Solana. Synracy Capital, co-founder Ryan Watkins believes : "Right now, Solana is comparable to Ethereum on most meaningful metrics, but its valuation is only 1/5 of Ethereum."
However, from a subtle point of view, Solana still has a crisis, especially the MEME currency ecosystem that once propelled Solana to the altar is experiencing a serious decline. In addition, the entire industry is still looking for new hot spots. A dark forest-style hunting show surrounding ordinary retail investors is being staged in the Solana ecosystem. But when the beneficiaries start to fish out all the benefits, is it the end of prosperity?
This article Behind the real and fake boom: Solana’s trading kingdom is invaded by robots? First appeared in Chain News ABMedia.
