In the first quarter of 2025, despite the 20% increase in application revenues, Solana faces a 64% drop in TVL, while transaction fees decrease by 24% compared to the previous quarter.
Solana is strengthening its position in the crypto market; however, its future will depend on its ability to address challenges and maintain growth momentum.
Revenue for the first quarter reached $1.2 billion: January stands out as a key moment.
According to the Messari report, Solana (SOL) achieved a total revenue from applications (Chain GDP) of $1.2 billion in the first quarter of 2025. This result signifies a growth of 20% compared to the previous quarter, when revenue was $970.5 million. This is the most successful quarter for Solana in the last 12 months, demonstrating a strong recovery of the ecosystem after a year of significant volatility.
It is worth noting that January provided nearly 60% of the total revenue for the entire quarter. This growth reflects the increasing demand for applications on Solana, particularly in meme coins, DEXs, and crypto wallets.
Solana's recovery can be explained by several factors, including low transaction fees and high processing speed, which are competitive advantages of this blockchain compared to competitors like Ethereum.
Pump.fun is coming to the forefront.
Among Dapps on Solana, Pump.fun came out on top with a revenue of $257 million, accounting for a significant portion of the ecosystem's total revenue.
The success of Pump.fun can be explained by the current trend of meme coins, which attract community attention, especially after the launch of the Trump meme coin on January 17, which boosted trading activity on Solana. However, the rapid growth of Pump.fun has brought many negative consequences for the market. In second place is the Phantom wallet, which secured second place with a revenue of $164 million. Phantom has long been one of the most popular wallets on Solana due to its user-friendly interface and seamless integration with various DeFi and NFT applications.
Photon ranks third with a revenue of $122 million, which is 13% higher than the previous quarter, demonstrating stable growth for this application.
The TVL in DeFi is sharply decreasing, but stablecoins are showing breakthrough growth.
Despite the impressive growth of Dapp revenues, the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols on Solana has sharply decreased by 64%, reaching $6.6 billion. This decline may be a result of volatile market sentiments, as investors withdrew capital from DeFi protocols to move into safer assets, such as stablecoins. Meanwhile, the stablecoin market on Solana experienced breakthrough growth, with its total value increasing by 145% to $12.5 billion. It is important to note that USDC—the leading stablecoin on Solana—recorded a 148% growth compared to the previous month, reaching a value of $9.7 billion, which is four times more than its main competitor, USDT.
USDT also performed strongly, increasing by 154% to $2.3 billion.
Decrease in transaction fees.
Another important point in the Messari report is the decrease in transaction fees on Solana. The average transaction fee in the first quarter of 2025 decreased by 24% compared to the previous quarter, reaching 0.000189 SOL (equivalent to $0.04).
This low fee level is one of the main reasons why Solana continues to attract users and Dapps, especially in sectors such as meme coins, DeFi, and NFT trading.
The first quarter of 2025 marked a significant step forward for Solana, as application revenue reached $1.2 billion. However, the 64% decrease in DeFi TVL is a troubling signal. The ecosystem faces numerous challenges, including unstable market sentiments and competition from other blockchains.
To support its growth, Solana must continue to leverage its advantages of low transaction fees and high processing speed while addressing DeFi-related issues to attract more capital from investors. At the time of publication, SOL is trading at $161.22. Technical indicators suggest that SOL is entering a likely consolidation phase near key support. However, some traders remain very optimistic about this.
«$SOL – the monthly chart of Sol is forming a massive ascending triangle. A breakout will trigger a significant rise,» commented the analyst.
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