Solana activity flips Ethereum amid memecoin craze, even as txs fail

Solana network activity surpassed Ethereum over the weekend amid a scramble for Solana-based memecoins — causing the network to struggle to keep up.

On March 16, Solana’s total trading volume soared past Ethereum, reaching $3.52 billion and beating out the daily volume on the Ethereum network by more than $1.1 billion, per DefiLlama.

However, the Solana network struggled to keep up with the influx of activity, with many users across X complaining about frequent instances of failed or missing transactions.

According to Solana Validator data , cited by pseudonymous user “Dagnum” on X, Solana’s ping time ran between 20 and 40 seconds at 8 pm UTC on March 16, resulting in approximately 50% of transactions failing for around 20 minutes.

The huge uptick in Solana network activity was driven by an outsized appetite for new memecoins. On March 14, degens began piling into a new memecoin called Book of Meme (BOME), which rallied from near-zero to a market capitalization of $1.45 billion in just 56 hours.

Another memecoin dubbed “$NAP” (NAP) also garnered significant attention from traders, rallying from a market cap of around $20 million to over $330 million in less than 18 hours.

The price of Solana ( SOL ) also rallied alongside the huge uptick in network activity, with SOL currently trading at $200, up 7.6% over the last week and 38.4% in the last month, per CoinGecko data.

Solana’s recent gains have also allowed the coin to overtake Binance’s BNB ( BNB ) coin to become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap at $88.5 billion.

Due to an overall increase in the total supply of Solana tokens, the network’s market cap is currently nearly $12 billion above its former top market cap of $76.5 billion — which it reached on Nov. 7, 2021.