Solana Price Surges 4% to $160.38 Amid 32% Transaction Increase

Solana's price has been on the rise, reaching $167 on Friday, its highest point since May 29. This surge in price has been accompanied by a significant increase in memecoin activity on the Solana network, with most major memecoins showing gains on the weekly timeframe. At the time of reporting, Solana's price stands at $160.38. The overall crypto market has also seen growth, surpassing a market cap of $3.6 trillion this week. This market-wide increase has led to a 32 percent rise in Solana’s transaction count, reaching 590 million, according to on-chain data. This figure outpaces the combined transactions of other major networks such as Ethereum, BNB chain, and Polygon, which saw increases of roughly 3%, 3.9%, and 7.6% respectively. Meanwhile, transactions on Base and Tron decreased by 3.9% and 0.2% respectively.

The number of active addresses on the Solana network has also increased by 5.3 percent, reaching 24.4 million. Additionally, fees generated on the network have climbed by 44 percent, amounting to $7.68 million. Over the past 30 days, the network has handled more than 2.1 billion transactions. This surge in activity highlights the growing interest and investment in the Solana ecosystem.

Investors are showing a growing appetite for Solana ETFs and meme coins. US-listed Solana ETFs have brought in $78 million in the last month, indicating a strong demand for altcoin-based funds despite Bitcoin remaining the market leader. The REX-Osprey SOL + Staking ETF (SSK), which began trading on July 2, has already amassed more than $41 million in assets. Volatility Shares’ leveraged Solana ETF (SOLT) has gathered $69 million so far this year, while its standard Solana ETF (SOLZ) has held $23 million. These inflows come as several fund managers prepare for what they hope will be the next big ETF approval in the US. Although the SEC has not yet green-lit such an offering, many in the industry are growing hopeful it could win approval soon.

Meme tokens on Solana have also seen a significant increase in value alongside the broader rally. According to present data, PENGU by Pudgy Penguins and Bonk are the two high-market-cap meme coins that recorded the highest climb this week. PENGU has increased by 48.2% and Bonk has spiked 33.9% over the last 7 days. Their current market caps stand at $1,918,146,113 and $1,465,716,245, respectively. Other notable gains include Goatseus Maximus, which rose 27.0%, and Peanut the Squirrel and Popcat, which gained 21.7% and 21.2% respectively. Dogwifhat added 13.6% while the Official Trump coin climbed to 11.8%. Smaller advances came from Fartcoin (4.5%), dog (Bitcoin) (7.1%), and aura (6.8%). Among the major meme tokens, only Useless Coin and Melania Meme slipped, down 3.7% and 0.1%.

In the last 24 hours, Bonk saw about $1.46 billion in trading volume, Pudgy Penguins $863 million, and Official Trump $520 million, highlighting strong trading interest alongside Solana’s gains. Reflecting the growing interest in Sol-based meme coins, Pump.fun, a Solana-based meme coin launchpad that allows users to create speculative meme coins, raised $600 million in just 12 minutes during its ICO, making it the largest ICO on record. In an X post on July 9th, Pump. Fun said it would sell 150 billion coins at a price of $0.004 per token. Prior to the public sale, the platform had sold 180 billion coins to private investors at that same price. Alon Cohen, co-founder of Pump.fun, confirmed that this offering generated $600 million, raising the total funds to about $1.32 billion. Pump.fun also noted that UK and US investors were not eligible to participate in the token sale.