The Solana Evolution: From Memecoins to Consumer Apps
Solana has had a conflicted life, going from hero to zero and back to hero again. During FTX’s rise to fame (then infamy), Solana was the industry darling. It was fast, it was new, and it felt like a paradigm shift for all chains.
Unfortunately for them and us, FTX pulled the rug out from under us all. We were left scrambling as an industry, as Sam Bankman-Fried and co left us in the lurch. It was a dark moment for us all, but like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Solana came back anew as builders continued to chew glass and forge a comeback of their own.
This comeback was headlined by their resurgent DeFi ecosystem, which utilizes points systems to generate excitement and attract TVL. This strategy proved effective, as projects like Jito, Sanctum, Kamino, and more successfully attracted a substantial number of users and secured their capital through the use of these platforms. This was also the restart of teams providing large airdrops and really helped kickstart DeFi growth for Solana.
Larger airdrops tend to attract users to the chain and platform where they occur, creating a group of people loyal to the ecosystem. Who knew one of the best marketing tools was making users rich?
Then, sometime after this, Solana encountered its next major headwind.
Memes come Wif a price
Most people recognise Solana as the memecoin chain, and while that’s not all it is, this was an accurate description for a time. The memecoin craze had humble beginnings, and it really started after FTX, in the cold winter of December 2022.
When FTX decimated the Solana ecosystem, a notable exception emerged: BONK, which airdropped a substantial amount to Solana users/builders. Over 50% of the token’s supply, which surged by ~10,000%, helped to breathe life back into the chain.
A lot of people who built through the Solana dark ages contribute the majority of their runway to the sudden capital injection done by BONK. In many ways, BONK put the Solana ecosystem on life support, giving it the strength it needed to crawl back out of its hole.
But that was just the beginning of the memecoin era.
While some memecoins were starting to float around and gain traction, none garnered more attention and hype than dogwifhat.
At the end of 2023, into the beginning of 2024, WIF had a stratospheric run, moving from inception all the way to a $4.89B market cap. Millionaires were made, and the idea of “runners” became a central theme on Solana. If this meme could be championed and pushed to such heights, why couldn’t others?
Then along came PumpFun.
This launch completely changed the fabric of the Solana ecosystem as we know it, for better or for worse. Pumpfun, being a memecoin-based launchpad, allowed anyone to create a memecoin for any rhyme or reason.
In short, they made it possible for people to tokenise any event, any newsworthy headline, anyone. This led to a mania of sorts, with over five million tokens launched by the middle of 2024, generating $1B+ in fees, with memecoins accounting for over 60% of Solana’s trading volumes.
We saw memecoins created by celebrities (more than we ever wanted to), like Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER, Hawk Tuah’s HAWK, and even a celebrity squirrel by the name of PNUT. Memecoins emerged from viral TikToks, random conversations, and even AI-generated tokens like GOAT.
Solana memes were listed on major exchanges like Binance and Coinbase, and PumpFun made over $500M in revenue, solidifying Solana as “the meme chain”. But all of the memecoin froth ironically ended the same way that a lot of their charts do – a blow-off top followed by a flatline.
In January of this year, we had the mother of all announcements: the President of the United States had made a memecoin.
No one could believe it. Group chats everywhere were firing in all directions just like all our neurons inside our depleted, numb trader brains.
The majority of CT thought that it was a hack, but it wasn’t; it was real life.
This was one of the last gasps of the memecoin mania, as activity started to flatten out as Trump’s launch was seen as the final extraction. Following TRUMP, the market proceeded to drop amidst bear market calls, leading to our eventual rally in April.
An unintended consequence of these events was that Solana was seemingly cursed to be a meme chain. While many know that to not be true, as many quality protocols are not memes, the stink of extractive memes remained.
The Times are a-changin’
While memecoins still exist, you can feel the change in the air around Solana. Participants in the ecosystem are jaded by memes and want something different.
This isn’t to say that Pumpfun isn’t succeeding, because they totally are. They are smashing metrics and making money like nobody’s business, but even they have started to pivot ever so slightly from being a memecoin launchpad into something a little different.
So let’s get into why the perception of Solana has started to shift and why mindshare might be moving in their direction.
If you consult the above image, you’ll see that Solana has flipped everything in mindshare, meaning that it might be the most talked-about ecosystem on CT. That’s quite impressive, considering the backlash the chain received following the Trump fiasco.
However, recently, Solana has begun to diversify into other verticals, such as consumer apps and DeFi, to help supplement its memecoin tendencies.
Solana’s DeFi expansion
In fact, DeFi on Solana has eclipsed its prior 2021 ATH of $11.7B, settling in at $12.5B at the current time of writing.
To put this into greater perspective, if you compare DeFi TVLs on both Ethereum and Solana, Solana is the only one to surpass its 2021 highs. Now if you take Solana’s 2023 lows of $210M TVL to now, it’s an increase of ~5850%, nearly 60x!
You may think a lot of this TVL increase is due to Pumpfun and you’d be right…kinda. Pumpfun indirectly contributed more TVL to the Solana ecosystem by boosting the growth of Raydium and Jupiter. This is due to increased trading on DEXs and liquidity getting moved to Raydium after the graduation of Pumpfun memes.
For instance, Pumpfun launched on January 19, 2024, and Raydium’s TVL increased from $139M to a high of $2.9B in January 2025, growing nearly 18.6 times, suggesting Pumpfun helped supercharge their growth, but regardless, it’s all net positive for the network.
But Pumpfun, Raydium, and Jupiter aren’t the only things that have contributed to Solana’s TVL as there is a whole plethora of DeFi verticals that have helped reignite Solana DeFi.
Lending protocols and LSTs provided some kindling for this DeFi reignition as these two sectors always combine incredibly well with each. LSTs boomed on Solana with Jito, Sanctum, Jupiter, Marinade, and more, providing billions in TVL for the ecosystem.
Now with LSTs being prime collateral for lending protocols, teams like Kamino and JupLend (a collaboration with Fluid) were able to acquire that sticky liquidity to help underpin Solana’s DeFi.
DEXs also benefited tremendously from all the increased activity on the chain with Meteora, Orca, and of course, Raydium, accounting for over $3B in TVL.
Consumer Apps on Solana
Solana’s transformation from a pure memecoin speculation to DeFi and consumer apps has been a slow burn, but they’ve made a considerable effort to onboard as many of these apps as possible. They’ve learned that most regular users don’t want to make the effort to learn complex crypto-native applications and need easy-to-understand concepts.
The new Solana Seeker phone is a significant step forward, as it bridges the gap between mobile app stores and crypto, providing a valuable connection for users to the crypto landscape. Having used the phone, there are plenty of good DeFi apps and various games that are easy for people to use, even if they aren’t native to crypto.
Trading cards were another underrated sector of consumer apps that Solana successfully addressed with projects like Collector Crypt and Phygitals, leading the charge. Pokémon and One Piece cards have been in a bull market all on their own, and ripping packs is an incredibly addictive act. These apps in particular are a great way to nerdsnipe card collectors into coming onchain.
Solana has made a concerted effort here to onboard builders of consumer apps, and that could pay dividends in the future if they can secure the next generation of apps on Solana.
Here are some interesting consumer apps right now that are worth checking out:
@opinionsdotfun - A marketplace where you can bet on people’s opinions
@solanapay - A payments app integrated with Shopify
@phantom - Solana’s super wallet, now featuring Perps from @hyperliquidx
@drip_haus - a collectibles/content app
@uselulo - a stablecoin savings app, also on iOS
@timedotfun - can “buy time” from creators and get access to them, while creators can choose how much to charge for their time
@glympsedotfun - fantasy sports for creators, bet on which creators get the most engagement
@pumpdotfun - livestreaming and memecoin launchpad app
@tweemdotlol - betting on X posts gaining virality
@collector_crypt and @phygitals - trading cards and collectibles onchain
Conclusion
We all want crypto adoption to succeed, and the only way to achieve this is to expand beyond our sphere of influence and get the general public involved. We need more apps that anyone with a 50 IQ can operate, things with better UX/UI, and anything that can abstract away all the difficulties that come with crypto.
Solana (and other chains like MegaETH) are recognizing this, and are trying their hardest to build out that next generation of crypto projects. Prediction markets, payments, and livestreaming are really leading the way in crypto adoption, and so far Solana has some great payments apps, and Pumpfun is leading the way with livestreaming.
Among the most interesting verticals to explore are surely prediction markets, especially given Kalshi is now supporting Solana builders with grants
To wrap this all up, Solana is clearly in a new era of life, with TVL at ATHs and a growing group of builders creating the next DeFi/consumer apps. This writer believes they are making some good strides in attempting to bridge the gap for normies and if they can succeed, then it’s a net benefit for all of crypto.
Schizo out!