TVL hits a historic high, the ecosystem is thriving again: Solana is staging the strongest comeback in encryption history.

Original Title: Beyond Memecoin, the opportunity to become the next “millionaire” may lie in Solana social applications and Decentralized Finance.

Original author: @schizoxbt

Original source:

Reprint: Daisy, Mars Finance

The development path of Solana has been extremely bumpy, a story of going from hero to zero and then back to hero again. During the rise of FTX, Solana was the darling of the industry. It is fast and represents a paradigm shift among all public chains.

Unfortunately, FTX suddenly pulled the rug out from under us, catching all of us off guard. When Sam Bankman-Fried and his associates abandoned us, the entire industry fell into chaos. This was a dark moment for all of us, but just like the phoenix rising from the ashes, Solana has made a stunning comeback as builders continue to persevere.

This return is most notable for its recovering DeFi ecosystem, which utilizes a points system to stimulate user enthusiasm and attract TVL. This strategy has proven effective, as projects like @Jito_labs, @Sanctumso, and @Kamino have successfully attracted a large number of users and locked their funds by using these platforms. This also marks the starting point for the team to resume large-scale airdrops, which indeed helped kickstart the growth of Solana's DeFi.

Large-scale airdrops tend to attract users to the chain and platform where they occur, thereby creating a group of users loyal to that ecosystem. Who would have thought that one of the best marketing tools is actually making users wealthy?

Then, at some point after this, Solana encountered the next major resistance.

The Cost of Memes

Most people view Solana as a meme chain, although this is not entirely accurate, it was a correct description for a period of time. The memecoin frenzy started small and really took off after the FTX collapse during the winter of December 2022.

When FTX severely impacted the Solana ecosystem, there was one exception: BONK airdropped a large number of tokens to Solana users and builders. Over 50% of the token supply (which saw its price surge by about 10,000%) helped revive the chain.

Many people who built during the dark times of Solana credit a sudden capital injection from BONK for most of their operational funds. In many ways, BONK provided life support to the Solana ecosystem, giving it the strength needed to climb out of the abyss.

But this is only the beginning of the memecoin era.

Although some memecoins have started to emerge and gain attention, none have garnered more attention and hype than dogwifhat.

At the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, WIF experienced an astonishing rise, reaching a market value of 4.89 billion dollars from its inception. Millionaires were born, and the concept of “meme coins” became the core theme on Solana. If this meme can be revered and pushed to such heights, why can't other memes?

Then @PumpdotFun appeared.

This release completely changes the structure of the Solana ecosystem as we know it. Pumpfun, as a memecoin-based launch platform, allows anyone to create a memecoin for any reason.

In short, it enables people to tokenize any event, any newsworthy headline, and any person. This has led to a frenzy, with over five million tokens issued by mid-2024, generating over $1 billion in fees, with memecoins accounting for over 60% of Solana's trading volume.

We have seen memecoins created by celebrities, such as Iggy Azalea's MOTHER, Hawk Tuah's HAWK, and even a famous squirrel named PNUT. Memecoins originate from viral TikTok trends, random conversations, and even AI-generated tokens like GOAT.

Solana's meme coin has been listed on major exchanges like Binance and Coinbase, and PumpFun has generated over $500 million in revenue, solidifying Solana's position as the “meme chain.” But ironically, all memecoin bubbles ultimately end in the same way, spiking and then falling back, before leveling off.

In January this year, we welcomed one of the most significant announcements: the U.S. President created a memecoin.

No one dares to believe it. Group chats everywhere are fiercely discussing in all directions like the neurons in the exhausted and numb brains of traders.

Most crypto Twitter believes this is a hack, but it is not; this is real life.

This is one of the last gasps of the memecoin frenzy, as the launch of TRUMP is seen as the final liquidity squeeze, and meme activity begins to stabilize. After TRUMP, the market declined amid bearish sentiments, with a rebound occurring in April.

Solana seems to be cursed as a meme chain. While many people know that this is not the case, as many high-quality protocols are not memes, the stench of extractive memes still lingers.

The times are changing

Although memecoins still exist, you can feel that significant changes are happening in Solana. Ecosystem participants are tired of memes and want something different.

This is not to say that Pumpfun is not successful, because they are very successful. Their metrics are off the charts, making money like no one else, but even they are starting to slightly pivot from the memecoin launch platform to a somewhat different direction.

So, let's delve into why the perception of Solana is beginning to shift and why the share of mind may be moving in their direction.

Image courtesy of @_dexuai

If you look at the image above, you will see that Solana has surpassed everything in terms of mind share, which means it may be the most discussed ecosystem on crypto Twitter. Considering the strong backlash the chain suffered after the Trump debacle, this is quite impressive.

However, recently, Solana has begun to diversify into other verticals, such as consumer applications and Decentralized Finance.

Solana's Decentralized Finance expansion

In fact, DeFi on Solana has already surpassed its previous historical high of 11.7 billion USD in 2021, stabilizing at 12.5 billion USD at the time of writing.

To take a more comprehensive view of this issue, if you compare the DeFi TVL on Ethereum and Solana, Solana is the only one that has surpassed its 2021 peak. Now, if you look at Solana's growth from a low of $210 million TVL in 2023 to now, it has increased by about 5850%, nearly 60 times!

You might think that a large part of the growth in TVL is due to Pumpfun. Pumpfun has indirectly contributed more TVL to the Solana ecosystem by promoting the growth of @RaydiumProtocol and @JupiterExchange. This is due to the increase in trading volume on the DEX, as well as the liquidity from Pumpfun's meme coin transferring to Raydium after its 'graduation'.

For example, Pumpfun was launched on January 19, 2024, and Raydium's TVL increased from $139 million to a peak of $2.9 billion in January 2025, an increase of nearly 18.6 times, indicating that Pumpfun helped drive their growth, but in any case, this is a net positive for the Solana network.

However, Pumpfun, Raydium, and Jupiter are not the only factors contributing to Solana's TVL; there are many DeFi verticals that have helped reignite Solana DeFi.

Lending protocols and liquid staking tokens have provided some sparks for the resurgence of this DeFi, as these two sectors always combine well. LST is thriving on Solana, with projects like Jito, Sanctum, Jupiter, and Marinade providing billions of dollars in TVL to the ecosystem.

Now, as LST becomes the primary collateral for lending protocols, teams like Kamino and @Jup_Lend (in collaboration with @0xFluid) are able to gain that sticky liquidity to help support Solana's Decentralized Finance.

DEX has also benefited greatly from all the increased activities on-chain, with @MeteoraAG, @Orca_so, and of course Raydium, collectively occupying over $3 billion in TVL.

Consumer applications on Solana

The transition of Solana from pure meme speculation to DeFi and consumer applications has been a slow process, but they have put in considerable effort to introduce as many of these applications as possible. They understand that most average users do not want to bother learning complex crypto-native applications and need concepts that are easy to understand.

The new Solana Seeker mobile phone is an important advancement as it bridges the gap between the mobile app store and the crypto world, providing users with valuable connections to the crypto landscape. After using this phone, I found many excellent Decentralized Finance applications and various games that are easy to use even for non-crypto native users.

Trading cards are another underestimated area in consumer applications, and Solana has successfully addressed this with projects like @Collector_Crypt and @Phygitals, leading the trend. Pokémon and One Piece cards are already in a bull market, and unboxing is an incredibly addictive behavior. These applications are a particularly good way to attract card collectors onto the chain.

Solana has been working collaboratively in this area, bringing in builders of consumer applications, and if they can ensure that the next generation of applications is built on Solana, it may yield returns in the future.

Here are some interesting consumer applications worth paying attention to at the moment:

@opinionsdotfun: A market where bets can be placed based on people's opinions.

@solanapay: Payment application integrated with Shopify

@phantom: Solana's super wallet now offers perpetual contracts from @hyperliquidx

@drip_haus: A collectibles / content application

@uselulo: A stablecoin savings app, also available on iOS.

@timedotfun: You can “purchase” the time of creators and gain opportunities to interact with them, while creators can choose how much to price their time.

@glympsedotfun: Dream Sports for Creators, betting on which creators can achieve the most engagement.

@pumpdotfun: Live streaming and memecoin launch platform application

@tweemdotlo: Bet on X posts to achieve viral spread

@collector_crypt and @phygitals: On-chain trading cards and collectibles

Conclusion

We all hope that crypto technology can be successfully adopted, and the only way to achieve this goal is to expand our influence and engage the public. We need more low-threshold applications, better user experiences and user interfaces, and anything that can abstract away all the difficulties of crypto technology.

Solana and @MegaETH_labs have recognized this and are doing their utmost to build the next generation of crypto projects. Prediction markets, payments, and live streaming are indeed at the forefront of driving crypto adoption, and so far, Solana has some great payment applications, while Pumpfun is leading in live streaming.

The verticals that are definitely worth exploring include prediction markets, especially considering that @Kalshi is now supporting Solana builders through funding.

In summary, Solana is clearly entering a new era, with TVL reaching an all-time high and an increasing number of builders creating the next generation of Decentralized Finance and consumer applications.