- DEX volumes dragged Solana chain fees to October 2024 levels.
- Markets are now focused on next week’s Fed meeting for potential catalysts.
Decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volumes across top chains have declined 60% from January highs, hitting Solana [SOL] the hardest, per Coinbase analysts.
In January, trading DEX volumes peaked at $457.5 billion. By the end of February, the DEX volumes dipped below $300B; as of mid-March, the monthly volume was at $100B, per aggregated data from DeFiLlama by The Block.
Source: The Block
Solana hit hardest
Solana’s top platforms, like Raydium, Meteora and Orca, drove most of the January DEX volumes, especially following the launch of TRUMP and MELANIA meme-coins.
Unfortunately, Solana memecoins cooled off significantly in January, noted Coinbase (CB) analysts in their weekly market review.
“Memecoin trading activity has been particularly hard hit, reflected in Solana’s 82% drop in DEX volumes since the US presidential inauguration in January.”
In fact, Pump.fun’s traded volume, the key driver of the meme mania in Solana, dipped to October 2024 lows. As a result, the massive decline in activity dented Solana transaction fees, added CB analysts.
“This has had second-order effects on Solana transaction fees, which reached their lowest levels since September 2024 (denominated in SOL).”
Source: DeFiLlama
In terms of SOL, the chain fees dipped from 141K SOL in January to 7K SOL as of press time — a whopping 95% decline in fees.
SOL’s value also tanked as speculative interest waned from mid-January. It dropped from $295 to a low of $112 before bouncing to $134 at press time. Even so, the altcoin was still down 55% from its all-time highs.
On the contrary, Ethereum’s DEX volumes remained resilient per the CB report.
That said, the decline was also part of a broader market contraction, accelerated by macro uncertainty amid Trump tariff wars.
According to CB analysts, the risk-off trend could persist unless next week’s FOMC meeting stops quantitative tightening (QT) and stabilizes markets.
“We think there’s a good chance of a pause or stop in QT as bank reserve levels are approaching the 10-11% of GDP threshold commonly considered sufficient for maintaining financial stability.”
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