The Web3 mobile phone Saga, officially launched by the Solana blockchain network, is priced at US$599. It has not been selling well since it was launched in May this year. However, in December, the official airdropped 30 million BONK tokens to each buyer of the mobile phone. These BONK tokens are worth US$700 after they are received. The buyers of the mobile phone not only recovered their investment but also made a profit.

As a result of this stimulus, the Saga phone was priced at a 500% premium on eBay, with the listing price directly reaching US$3,000.

Soga phone's "bait" BONK is also the fuse that has recently driven the Solana chain to become active. This Meme coin (meme concept) with a dog image as its logo has risen from around US$0.0000038 to a maximum of US$0.000034 in 30 days, directly "eliminating 0" and doubling by nearly 10 times. Although it has recently fallen back to US$0.000015, the monthly increase is still 290%.

Low prices and high increases can best stimulate the nerves of cryptocurrency players. BONK's fire can also be said to have completely ignited the Meme fever of the Solana chain. Animal series Meme tokens such as the "Shiba Inu"-themed WIF token and the "Dragon"-themed SILLY have been launched one after another. Funds have subsequently flowed into the Solana chain in large quantities. The total value of crypto assets on the chain (TVL) increased to US$1.475 billion within the month, a monthly increase of 120%.

The active trading of Meme on the Solana chain also boosted the demand for on-chain Gas "SOL". Coupled with the optimistic secondary market, the price of SOL exceeded 100 US dollars within a month, soaring to a high of US$113.27, an increase of 92.67%.

There is a voice saying that "Solana is becoming a meme chain", but if you look closely at the transaction volume and project distribution of this chain, you will find that the funds are still in DeFi infrastructure, including decentralized trading applications DEX, lending DApp, liquidity management and other applications, and some new infrastructure protocols are beginning to emerge. In addition, applications such as the metaverse and games have also retained some funds.

When the Solana chain was resurrected, the Meme "wealth effect" brought indispensable attention, but the key to determining the health of Solana is still the construction of on-chain applications, and some new applications are beginning to appear.

Meme coins collectively dance

If you are keen on making money in the "altcoin" market of crypto assets, you must have heard of "Silly Dragon" recently. Its token is called SILLY. After its launch on December 5, it facilitated a transaction volume of US$30 million on the decentralized exchange (DEX) Jupiter Swap within 2 days. The current price is US$0.12. When it was first launched on the secondary market, there were 2 "0"s before the decimal point.

The image of "Silly Dragon" first appeared on the clothes of Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko. At the end of October this year, he wore this clothes at Solana's Breakpoint 2023 annual conference. Two months later, this image had its own Meme coin SILLY, and the creator was anonymous.

Although inspired by Anatoly’s clothes, SILLY is not the most popular Meme coin on the Solana chain. The real spark is BONK, which was created a year ago. After being in a "zombie" state for nearly a year, this old Meme announced from December 13th to 15th this year that it would officially launch a large-scale airdrop for the Solana ecosystem, one of the targets of which is the buyers of Solana's Web3 mobile phone Saga.

BONK price data collected by CoinGecko

During the BONK airdrop plan, the US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase was the most sensitive, launching BONK on December 15, pushing the price up 50% within 24 hours to a high of $0.000014, facilitating a transaction volume of over $2.35 billion.

The Meme fever on the Solana chain has begun. WIF (Dogwifhat), PONKE, Popcat, Eggdog, and Melon Dog have all come out, just like an "animal coin" meeting. Among them, WIF, which was launched during Thanksgiving, has a Meme character of a Shiba Inu wearing a knitted hat. The token was born on the Solana chain on December 18 with an initial market value of US$100 million. By December 24, the market value doubled to more than US$220 million.

Meme coins flock to Solana chain

During this period, the most direct impact of the Meme fever on the Solana chain was to push up the total value locked (TVL) of the chain's crypto assets.

DefiLlama data shows that on December 1, the TVL of the Solana chain was US$670 million. By December 27, this figure had changed to US$1.475 billion, an increase of 120.14%.

The price of the Solana chain's Gas token SOL also grew simultaneously, from $59 on December 1 to a high of $121, also doubling, and has now fallen back to around $110.

New application "airdrop" surges

From the perspective of time, the inflow of funds on the Solana chain is indeed consistent with the active and savvy users of Meme coins during this period who want to obtain popular chips at lower prices directly from the chain or in the application. Some people wait for the centralized exchanges to pay attention to these Memes and gain new gains; others directly get application rewards by providing liquidity in the DeFi applications on the chain.

All of these have driven the demand for Gas token SOL. But if you look closely, what really supports the transaction activity on the Solana chain is still the infrastructure, which is an important carrier of funds and traffic.

Top 10 projects by 24-hour trading volume on Solana chain on December 26

According to DappRadar data, judging from the 24-hour trading volume, the old projects in DeFi, games, metaverse, governance and other sectors on the Solana chain have maintained a very high level of activity, including Chainlink, Aave, Jito, Raydium, STEPN, and Helium. These are the key to ensuring the healthy development of Solana.

In the list of top 10 in 24-hour trading volume, there are actually only 3 meme projects.

The decentralized oracle network ChainLink is the infrastructure of almost all blockchain on-chain infrastructure, because on-chain applications need such smart contracts to connect to off-chain data. On December 26 alone, it generated $617 million worth of transactions on the Solana chain; the lending application Aave ranked second with a transaction volume of $213 million. The sneaker game STEPN and the metaverse game Star Atlas also have more than one million funds retained.

It is worth mentioning that the recently popular DePIN project "Helium" in the decentralized mobile device supply network sector is also on the 24-hour transaction volume top list on the Sonala chain, contributing 29.83 million US dollars in transaction volume. Helium is the largest DePIN project on the chain.

It can be seen that although Meme coins are popular, the capital activity on the Solana chain is not only concentrated on Meme. And all veteran players in Web3 finance know that the fire of Meme is hot enough, but it will not last long.

Solana’s founding team is also thinking about what happens after the Meme carnival.

“I’m glad that BONK is doing well. Let the upcoming DeFi token also be a huge success.” On November 20, the post of @R89Capital, a KOL in the crypto circle, attracted the attention of Solana co-founder Anatoly, who asked, “Do you think Meme coins will always be just Memes (a completely acceptable result)? Or do you think that a global development movement can be built based on rewards to get people to do some kind of “task-based” work?”

Chris Burniske, partner at Placeholder VC, believes that “if done right, crypto assets will allow valuable labor to be more closely tied to the capital it creates. So while Meme coins are interesting, I’m focused on making the latter a reality.”

What Chris is concerned about is indeed happening. Some new DeFi applications and NFT projects are emerging and are beginning to encourage users to interact. On the chain, interactions often leave traces, and these interaction records will be the "tickets" for the interactors to receive application airdrop rewards in the future.

These relatively early applications include:

New applications emerging on the Solana chain

Among them, the derivatives trading application Zeta Markets has established a "Z-Score" points system, the lending application Kamino also has a points setting, and the AMM application Meteora has confirmed the airdrop.

The meme craze has once again drawn the market’s attention to Solana. The chain has begun to recover from the shadow of the FTX crash, with traffic and funds pouring back into the chain. The next test will be whether there will be more interesting applications that can take over or even retain the traffic generated by the meme.

(Disclaimer: Please strictly abide by the laws and regulations of your location. This article does not represent any investment advice)