January has been a stellar month for the Solana blockchain, as seen through the lens of The Block’s Data Dashboard. The transaction volume involving SOL and SPL tokens on Solana has experienced a tremendous leap, reaching $951.9 billion for the month, with a couple of days still left. This marks a significant 30% increase from December’s high of $735.8 billion.
The recent spike in transaction activity on the Solana network is a notable departure from the patterns observed in 2023 and much of 2022. For perspective, the network’s transaction volume in September 2023 was just $40 billion.
Alongside this network activity, Solana’s price has also been on the rise. SOL recently climbed back above the $100 mark, with decentralized exchanges witnessing increased trading activity, particularly with WEN token pairs. Data from Dune Analytics reveals that stablecoin-SOL, stablecoin-WEN, and SOL-WEN pairs are currently the most traded on Solana-based DEXs.
This week’s boost in Solana’s momentum is partly attributed to WEN being airdropped to users of the Jupiter decentralized exchange, Solana Saga phone users, and certain Solana-based NFT project owners. As a result, SOL’s price has surged by almost 8% in the past 24 hours.
With Solana’s uptick, there’s been a corresponding spike in liquidations, especially short positions on centralized exchanges. The volatility has led to approximately $9.9 million in liquidations, predominantly shorts, as part of the larger crypto market trend witnessing over $79 million in short position liquidations in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGlass data.
