Over the weekend, there was a surge in activity on the Solana network, surpassing that of Ethereum. Trading volume on Solana reached $3.52 billion on March 16, exceeding Ethereum’s daily volume by over $1.1 billion, according to DefiLlama. However, the network struggled to handle the increased activity, resulting in failed or missing transactions for many users.
Solana’s ping time, as reported by Solana validator data cited by pseudonymous user “Dagnum,” ranged from 20 to 40 seconds on March 16 at 8 pm UTC. This led to approximately 50% of transactions failing for about 20 minutes. The congestion on the Solana network also reached new highs during this period.
The surge in Solana network activity was driven by the demand for new memecoins. Book of Meme (BOME) saw a significant influx of interest on March 14, with its market capitalization skyrocketing from near-zero to $1.45 billion in just 56 hours. Another memecoin, Nap (NAP), also gained significant attention, increasing its market cap from around $20 million to over $330 million in less than 18 hours.
As a result of the increased network activity, the price of Solana (SOL) also experienced a rally. SOL is currently trading at $200, reflecting a 7.6% increase over the past week and a 38.4% increase in the last month, according to CoinGecko.
Additionally, Solana’s market capitalization reached a new all-time high, surpassing Binance’s BNB to become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap at $88.5 billion.
The overall increase in the total supply of Solana tokens has contributed to the network’s market cap currently being nearly $12 billion higher than its previous peak of $76.5 billion, which was reached on November 7, 2021.