Recently, the price increase of Solana ($SOL ) has been mainly driven by the memecoin craze, especially between October 11 and 18, when SOL increased by 12.1%. As demand for memecoin surges, so does the Solana network’s transaction volume, fee revenue, and total value locked (TVL). Although the logic behind this craze is not clear, social media influencers, such as pwnlord69 and other accounts, played a key role in attracting market attention.

On the Solana network, some memecoins have achieved significant gains. For example, the market value of GOAT has reached $400 million in one week, while other projects such as SPX6900, APU, and FWOG have increased by 379%, 170%, and 134% respectively. These tokens attract more investor attention, creating a positive feedback loop that further drives the price of SOL.

Solana’s TVL recently surged to 41 million $SOL , its highest level in two years, while at the same time, Ethereum and BNB Chain’s lock-in volume remained essentially unchanged. This shows that in addition to memecoin, Solana has also consolidated its market position through the strong performance of its decentralized exchanges such as Raydium and Sanctum.

It is worth mentioning that Solana’s weekly decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume increased by 43%, even surpassing Ethereum’s second-layer network Arbitrum, showing its strong market competitiveness. While the sustainability of the memecoin craze is difficult to predict, $SOL ’s network performance and high scalability give it a chance to move toward $180. In addition, Solana's potential in areas such as AI, Web3, games and prediction markets also provides it with long-term growth space.

As network activity and market sentiment pick up, SOL's upward trend is expected to continue. The first goal is to break through $160. If it can stand firm at $160, the goal of reaching $180 does not seem to be out of reach.