Solana has once again become one of the prominent players in cryptocurrency that has made tremendous strides. According to a Messari State of Solana Q1 2024 report, Solana recorded one of the most significant gains in its average daily spot DEX volume, which moved up with a whooping percentage from $1.5 billion to approximately 319% q/q. This surge underpins Solana’s rise as an attractive platform for both retail users and meme coin traders alike.
In Q1 2024, Solana held onto its status as a market leader, finishing at number five among all tokens by market capitalization. In spite of a slight pullback from its previous cycle high, this brought it to new heights, closing Q1 at $86.4bn—a fantastic 97% increase on a q/q basis. However, SOL is currently trading at $194, which is 25% below its all-time high of around $260.
The network’s revenue, a reflection of all the protocol collected fees, experienced a huge rise of 200% q/q in SOL terms. This resulted in an enormous 597% growth in its quarterly revenues in USD from $98.8 million, to be precise, for this reason. In addition, Solana hit its highest-ever daily income peak, close to $4.9 million, on March 18.
Among other unique features, half of the fees collected by the network are burnt; hence considerably affecting its Quarterly inflation rate, which dropped from 5.5% to 5.2% during Q1 2024. It means that there has been a decrease in inflation for Solana which is historic as it has decreased by 6%, while the issuance rate will continue decreasing until it stabilizes at about 1.5%.
Solana’s Network Challenges and Upgrades
However, in spite of such accomplishments, there are challenges to the network stability in keeping up with increasing amounts of transactions. A bug in the legacy loader program led to the network’s first outage in almost a year. Besides, congestion issues developed as a result of a growing number of activities on the network, and this prompted discussions about updates to address them.
Despite these achievements, the Solana ecosystem remains vibrant that witnessed projects built on the Solana platform raising a record $89.2 million for Q1 2024 topping the total raised for the whole of 2023. Additionally, it is seeing increased decentralization attempts by launching a developer shop called Anza and growth organization named Colosseum which further strengthens its position as a leading blockchain platform.