This week began with Solana (SOL) flipping Ethereum (ETH) news as the cryptocurrency’s daily fees went past Ethereum’s due to increasing trading activity on the network. The surge in daily fees was due to the boom in the Raydium decentralized (DeFi) exchange.
The third largest blockchain in the world has generated more daily network fees than Ethereum which shows that the user activity of the blockchain is on the rise. In the last 24 hours leading up to October 28, Solana flipped Ethereum by generating more than $2.54 million worth of fees which is half a million more than Ethereum’s $2.07 million. This has turned Solana into the 5th largest fee-generating protocol in the crypto world.
The surge in daily fees has been linked with trading activity increase in the DEX platform Raydium which has collected more than $3.41 million worth of fees in the last 24 hours. SOL has been labelled as an “Ethereum killer” as it has always sought to reduce fees and enhance the transaction throughput without using Layer 2 blockchains like ETH. Ethereum strongly depends on L2 solutions for scalability which allegedly distributes the value from mainnet to side chains.
However, the recent growth in Solana blockchain technology wasn’t enough to flip Ethereum as its transaction fees fell short of ETH when calculated over a longer period. While Ethereum collected $134.6 million in transaction fees in the last 30 days, Solana made only 45% of Ethereum’s which is $61.3 million. This has solidified Ethereum’s position as the third-largest protocol based on transaction fees.
Every month, Solana generates most of its revenue from meme coins which surge unprecedently. Out of $61.7 million monthly transaction fees collected over the last month $29.5 million (more than 47%) came from meme coin transactions on Pump.fun. The rise in the crypto market’s interest in Solana-based meme coins since the beginning of 2024 has led to the launch of over $100 million in new meme coins by March.
Although crypto analysts warned of an overheated meme coin market two months after that, 98.6% of meme coins launched on Pump.fun didn’t make their way to Raydium. The analysts predicted that the market would hit a peak degeneracy within 2 months of the launch. But since that didn’t happen it points towards the risks of meme coin trading.
At present SOL is trading at $174.22 with a 1.08% increase in its value in the last 24 hours while ETH stands at $2,505 with a 0.32% surge.