Solana Misses Out on $200, Dominates DEX Trading Volume for 3rd Time

• Solana becomes the highest DEX trading volume blockchain for the third consecutive month.
• In December, the blockchain network recorded a DEX trading volume of $105 billion.
• SOL aims to reclaim the $200 price level but failed to do so after a 5% crash in 24 hours.

The Solana blockchain has dominated all the other blockchain networks, including Ethereum, in terms of decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume for the last three months. However, SOL, the native token of the Solana ecosystem, struggled to reclaim the $200 price level, as it crashed by 5% over the last 24 hours.  

According to DefiLiama data , Solana’s DEX trading volume reached a whopping $52.49 billion in October, $129.73 billion in November, and $105.05 billion in December while Ethereum stood at $41.4 billion in October, $70.3 billion in November, and $81 billion in December. 

Notably, Ethereum was ranked first in terms of DEX trading volume in September, but it stands third in December. The second place was taken by Binance’s BSC chain, which recorded a volume of $99 billion. However, Solana is ranked as the second-largest blockchain in terms of total value locked (TVL), which stands at $8.58 for the network, surpassed by Ethereum and Tron.  

Solana’s rise to dominance is largely channeled to the growth of Pump.fun platform, a meme coin generator. Bonk (BONK), dogwifhat (WIF), and Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) are some of the products from the platform. Notably, PENGU is the largest meme coin on the Solana blockchain. 

Further, the increased adoption of Jupiter (JUP) , a decentralized exchange aggregator on Solana, also contributed to the significant growth of the network. 

SOL Price Analysis

Last month, SOL made a new all-time high, hitting a price tag of $263.83. However, at the time of writing, the altcoin is trading at $188.77, down almost 5% in the past 24 hours and 27.15% from the ATH and has a market capitalization of $90.53 billion.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) for SOL reads a value of 38.64 which means that the bears have taken over the price action of the Solana token and the gradient of the line indicates that the prices might crash further as Bitcoin failed to retain $99,000 in the past 24 hours and the broader market’s correction continues .