Can Solana maintain its momentum through 2025’s second half?

Despite a sharp correction from its euphoric January peak, Solana has maintained momentum across core verticals: DeFi capital has returned, trading volume has surpassed Ethereum on several occasions, and institutional attention has solidified through ETF filings and futures market expansion.

Behind the price action lies a maturing infrastructure stack, with liquid staking dominating DeFi TVL and institutional interest growing. In this report, CryptoSlate will dive deep into the data behind Solana’s YTD performance, using on-chain metrics to assess the depth, durability, and direction of the network’s growth.

SOL entered 2025 with massive momentum, surging to an ATH of $295 in mid-January. The peak followed a broader market rally and frenzied on-chain activity, including a Trump memecoin craze on Solana DEXs. However, SOL retraced nearly 50% after this euphoric high in the ensuing months. By the beginning of June, SOL has settled at around $150, a significant correction from January.

Despite this pullback, SOL’s performance remains robust to date. It’s up substantially from its 2024 levels, and some analysts argue there could be a potential breakout as it consolidates around the $150-$160 range. Volatility has tapered off since Q1, but traders are watching key support in the $120 to $130 zone (and upside targets near $170) for the next big move.

The total value locked (TVL) in Solana’s protocols mirrored SOL’s price action, soaring in early 2025, dipping in March, and then recovering by the beginning of June. At its January peak, Solana’s TVL topped $11.8 billion, reaching an all-time high alongside SOL’s rally.

The subsequent market cooldown saw TVL fall back; by early April, aggregate TVL had shrunk to roughly $6 billion. However, the trend reversed at the beginning of the second quarter: Solana’s TVL climbed ~25% from April to May, rising from $6.1 billion on Apr 9 to about $7.65 billion by May 6. This momentum continued into May, when Solana’s TVL topped $9 billion.

Equally important is the composition of this TVL. Solana’s DeFi is no longer dominated solely by AMMs. It has evolved into a diverse landscape of DEXs, lending protocols, liquid staking, asset management, and more. According to DeFiLlama and Dune Analytics data, DEX platforms and aggregators (like Jupiter, Raydium, Meteora, etc.) contribute a large share of TVL, especially after a wave of liquidity influx from token airdrops and memecoin trading.

Lending and yield protocols such as Kamino (a liquidity optimization platform) have also grown, with Kamino hitting all-time highs in supply/TVL in the first quarter of 2025.

Notably, stablecoin liquidity on Solana reached new highs, as the stablecoin supply surpassed $13 billion in 2025 (up 156% year-to-date), providing ample dry powder for DeFi activity. While still shy of its January peak, the $9 billion TVL range in late May and early June shows a strong recovery, supported by both SOL’s price appreciation and fresh capital inflows.

One of the breakout stars of Solana’s 2025 DeFi resurgence is the liquid staking sector. Liquid staking protocols now dominate Solana’s dApp rankings by TVL, as SOL holders increasingly stake via these platforms to earn yield while retaining liquidity. In fact, 4 of Solana’s top 6 protocols by TVL are related to staking.

Jito, an MEV-enhanced staking protocol, has emerged as the single largest protocol on Solana, with roughly $2.7 billion in TVL at current SOL prices. Close behind is Marinade Finance, the veteran decentralized stake pool, which holds around $1.7 billion. Sanctum (an innovative “liquid staking layer”) still maintains a strong position with over $1.4 billion TVL.

Collectively, these platforms have helped Solana’s liquid staking derivatives (LSDs) supply reach all-time highs; by April, LSDs accounted for 45.5 million staked SOL (about 11.8% of all SOL staked on the network), a share that has been growing nearly every month. For context, this ratio was around 1:7 (liquid vs native staked SOL) and shrinking fast.

The prominence of liquid staking has profound implications for Solana DeFi. First, it boosts TVL: LSD tokens like mSOL (Marinade), jitoSOL, and stSOL (Lido’s Solana token) often circulate in DeFi lending markets, DEX pools, and yield strategies, effectively turning staking deposits into DeFi liquidity. For example, protocols like Kamino and others integrate LSDs to enhance yield opportunities, and a sizable portion of Solana’s recent TVL surge came from growth in liquid staking deposits.

Second, liquid staking has decentralization and performance benefits, protocols like Marinade and Jito help decentralize staked SOL across validators (Marinade even implemented an autonomous delegation strategy to over 400 validators). Jito, specifically, is notable for sharing MEV rewards with stakers, and its airdrop of the JTO governance token in Q1 2025 drew even more users into the ecosystem.

Finally, the competition among Solana LSD protocols is spurring innovation: newer entrants (e.g., Jupiter Exchange’s JUP token staking, laineSOL, BlazeStake, etc.) are coming up with unique twists, such as “creator coins” or restaking strategies.

Liquid staking now makes up a huge chunk of Solana’s DeFi activity, as over half of Solana’s DeFi TVL is in staking-related protocols and continues to grow as more traders seek to maximize yield without sacrificing liquidity.

Solana’s decentralized exchanges have been a standout success in 2025, with trading volumes on Solana rivaling or even surpassing Ethereum’s on numerous occasions. In late 2024 and early 2025, Solana experienced a DEX trading frenzy (fueled by viral memecoins and airdrops) that catapulted it to the #1 chain by DEX volume. During the last week of December 2024, Solana briefly captured 89.7% of all DEX volume across chains.

Throughout January, Solana consistently held a 50%+ share of DEX volumes, often handling more volume than all other chains combined. This was largely driven by Solana’s ultra-fast, low-cost trading environment, especially via Jupiter, the dominant Solana-native DEX aggregator, which alone has accounted for ~70% of Solana DEX volume.

High-profile token launches (e.g., the Trump-themed tokens in January) leveraged Solana DEXs like Meteora and Pump.fun, leading to days where Solana DEX volume dwarfed activity on Ethereum. For example, on Jan 18, a token launch helped push Meteora’s daily volume above $8 billion, contributing to Solana’s record week of DEX trading.

Since that early-year rush, Solana’s DEX volumes have normalized to more sustainable levels but remain very impressive. Solana has firmly established itself as the number two environment for DEX trading and often number one on a weekly basis.

By May 2025, Solana commanded roughly 28% of the overall DEX volume market share, topping Ethereum and BNB Chain (each around 18%). Weekly DEX volumes on Solana were trending in the tens of billions. For instance, the network saw about $30 billion in DEX volume over one week in May, the highest in over two months.

Despite the one-off memecoin hype, Solana’s share of DEX activity has structurally grown thanks to its performance advantages. Users have more recently been trading a wide array of assets on Solana, from major pairs (SOL, stablecoins, wrapped assets) to long-tail tokens facilitated by orderbook DEXes like Phoenix and innovative AMMs.

Solana’s low latency and high throughput also attracted active market makers and arbitrageurs, further boosting volume. In short, Solana’s DEX ecosystem went from a bear-market afterthought to a volume powerhouse, narrowing the gap with Ethereum and proving that a high-performance L1 can thrive in facilitating decentralized trading.

By most metrics, on-chain activity on Solana has surged in 2025, reflecting a renaissance in user engagement. The Solana network routinely processes 50–100+ million transactions daily, vastly outpacing most competitors. For example, one mid-March report noted Solana handling 86 million daily transactions and hosting over 4 million daily active addresses, putting it ahead of even Tron in usage. Although some of this activity was driven by transient memecoin and airdrop hunters (which subsided after Q1), the underlying growth trend is unmistakable.

Even in more “normal” periods, Solana’s baseline remains high: by May, the daily transaction count was about 57.7 million (on-chain transactions per day), rising ~25% month-over-month.

The network’s throughput has consistently averaged 1,000–1,300 TPS in recent months, with headroom to handle much more. For context, Solana regularly does 10x+ the daily transactions of Ethereum, albeit with a different workload profile (Solana counts simple transfers and vote transactions in that tally).

Crucially, active wallet addresses on Solana have also grown alongside the transaction counts. During Q1 2025, daily active addresses briefly dipped after the January spike, but by May, the network was back to seeing 3–4 million active addresses in 24 hours (with an upward trajectory).

This indicates not just bot or validator activity but also a broad base of retail users interacting with DeFi, NFTs, games, and other apps on Solana. Indeed, Solana’s own foundation reported an increase in unique fee-payers and program interaction counts through early 2025.

This resurgence in usage is a positive feedback loop: more activity attracts more developers to deploy apps on Solana, which in turn brings more users. Analysts have noted that Solana’s user growth in 2025 has been aided by improving wallet experiences and new consumer-facing apps.

The net result is that by mid-2025, Solana has re-solidified its reputation as a high-activity chain. It’s not just the raw metrics that impress; Solana’s activity is also more “retail” in nature (smaller, frequent transactions), indicating real user adoption rather than just large value moves.

A notable development in 2025 is the surge of traditional finance (TradFi) interest in Solana as an investable asset. Several major institutional players have moved to launch Solana-focused investment products, signaling confidence in SOL’s long-term prospects.

In February 2025, Franklin Templeton, one of the world’s largest asset managers, filed with the SEC to create a Solana ETF spot to track SOL’s price. This was a landmark move, reflecting growing demand to go beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum in US markets. Franklin’s proposed ETF (to be listed on Cboe BZX Exchange) chose Coinbase Custody for SOL holdings and came on the heels of a crypto-favorable shift in US regulatory sentiment with a new administration.

Around the same time, Grayscale Investments also stepped up its Solana strategy. In April, Grayscale filed an S-1 registration to convert its Grayscale Solana Trust into an ETF (ticker “GSOL”). This plan, if approved, would list GSOL on the NYSE and allow daily creation/redemption of shares backed by SOL. Grayscale’s filing followed an earlier application in late 2024 and is part of a broader expectation that Solana could be the next crypto ETF approved by the SEC.

Other asset managers like VanEck and Canary Capital have similarly joined the “Solana ETF race,” with industry analysts estimating a high probability (70% or more) of a Solana ETF approval by late 2025.

Institutional positioning doesn’t stop at ETFs. There’s also innovation in the realm of staking-yield funds. Notably, in mid-2025, REX Shares (in partnership with Osprey Funds) registered a novel set of “Ethereum and Solana Staking ETFs.” These proposed products take an unconventional approach: structured as C-corporations, the funds intend to hold SOL (or ETH) and stake at least 50% of those assets to generate staking rewards for shareholders.

By using a corporate structure, REX aimed to bypass some of the regulatory hurdles traditional ETFs face (the strategy avoids the typical 19b-4 exchange rule process).

This creative end-around of SEC rules indicates how keen TradFi firms are to offer yield-bearing Solana exposure. The SEC has yet to formally approve these staking ETFs, and it did raise questions about their compliance with the Investment Company Act of 1940. However, the fact that such filings exist and have even become active (as of late May) shows the growing institutional interest in Solana. Beyond ETFs, large investors have been accumulating SOL through venture funds and trusts.

For example, CoinShares’ fund flows reports in early 2025 often showed Solana-based investment products seeing multi-million dollar weekly inflows, sometimes second only to Bitcoin. All told, the involvement of Franklin Templeton, Grayscale, REX, Franklin’s CEO publicly bullish on Solana, and even Polygon’s ETF odds markets (Polymarket) pricing in ~80–90% chance of a SOL ETF by 2025 provide strong evidence that Wall Street sees Solana as a credible, investable network alongside the crypto majors.

Solana’s performance in 2025 reflects the divergence between short-term market repricing and long-term structural progress. A nearly 50% retracement in SOL’s price from its January peak may suggest a retreat in momentum, but beneath the surface, the network has solidified its position as a top-tier smart contract platform. DeFi liquidity has rebounded from its April low by over 50%, driven by capital rotation into liquid staking protocols and yield-bearing primitives that have become foundational to Solana’s on-chain economy. Jito, Marinade, and Sanctum together now anchor a large share of TVL, with MEV integration and validator decentralization efforts gaining traction.

Trading activity on Solana remains among the most active in the market. January’s DEX volume spike briefly placed Solana above all other chains, including Ethereum. While that pace normalized, Solana consistently holds a dominant share of weekly DEX activity, supported by low-latency infrastructure, deep liquidity on aggregators like Jupiter, and growing institutional market-making participation.

The ETF pipeline, led by Franklin Templeton, Grayscale, and REX Shares, positions Solana as the only non-Bitcoin, non-Ethereum asset with multiple live filings in the US. This elevates SOL into the core basket of institutional allocators and reinforces its status as the third most investable crypto asset in regulated markets. The existence of both spot and staking-based proposals highlights the demand for both price exposure and native yield.

If the network sustains this level of liquidity retention, user engagement, and protocol development while avoiding prior issues around downtime and centralization, the case for SOL as a structurally investable L1 grows stronger. The core differentiator, speed at scale with native composability, remains intact, and the next six months offer a real test of whether Solana’s architecture can turn transient market cycles into durable platform dominance.