Searches for the term “Solana” surpassed “Ethereum” for the first time this year as traders become curious about movements within its ecosystem. 

While Ethereum had a wide lead against Solana in terms of search interest throughout the year, the data shifted in the time period starting Dec. 17 to Dec. 23. Within that time, Solana had a search interest score of 56, while Ethereum had 50. 

Solana search interest over time in the last 12 months. Source: Google Trends 

According to Google Trends data, the search term Solana is set to get a score of 100 in terms of search interest in the time period from Dec. 24 to Dec. 30. Google Trends notes that a value of 100 means “peak popularity for the term.”

The data also showed that Solana attracted more search interest than Ethereum in countries like Spain and the Philippines. However, interest in Ethereum still dominated countries like Indonesia, Taiwan and Morocco. 

Solana search interest breakdown by region. Source: Google Trends 

Meanwhile, the data also showed that users who searched Solana have shown interest in search terms like “bonk” and “tensor.” Bonk is a dog-themed memecoin that flipped Pepe ( PEPE ) in market capitalization on Dec. 8, following a 370% monthly gain . On the other hand, Tensor is a Solana-based NFT marketplace that created the nonfungible token (NFT) collection Tensorians, which showed massive gains in the last 30 days.

Interest in the proof-of-stake blockchain platform may have also been fueled by the recent uptick of the Solana ( SOL ) token. On Dec. 20, SOL’s market cap passed XRP ( XRP ) as the token’s price saw a 13.8% increase . The token passed $82 for the first time since May 2022, overtaking XRP. 

On Dec. 22, the crypto token surpassed BNB ( BNB ), taking the spot for the fourth-largest crypto token by market capitalization. However, BNB reclaimed its spot on Dec. 29, as the SOL token returned to pre-Christmas prices .