News of Solana’s upcoming integration on OpenSea spurred a surge in Solana NFT transactions and sales volume earlier this week. The chain’s native token SOL reacted to the revelation similarly, soaring to a multi-week high of $128.93 on the last day of March. Beyond these events, Solana fared decently last month. Here are the details:
Market Metrics
Market capital
Solana (SOL) price – and market capital – expectedly moved in sync with the leading crypto assets, Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The SOL token boasted a market cap of $31.45 billion on the first day of March, a figure that rose steadily for the next three days before sliding to $25.15 billion on March 14 as the broader crypto market crashed. The token has since recovered, trading at $123.26 (market capital of $40.64 billion) at press time. The recent price upsurge has seen the token dethrone Ripple’s XRP to occupy sixth place in market capital rankings.
Circulating supply
The inverse relationship established in December between the circulating supply of Solana and the price of its native SOL token continued until around mid-month. Start of the month, the Solana network had 320,063,420 tokens in circulating supply, each token going for $98.69 at the time.
The supply kept on bumping up and down while the price declined until March 13, when supply was 319,643,988 at a token price of $78.75. Afterward, the increase in the supply in circulation more or less coincided with a rise in the token price.
Token, Transactions, and Account Metrics
Daily non-vote transactions
Solana blockchain logs vote transactions in the total count of transactions. The all-time transaction count stood at 66,687,193,745 at writing, with 23.7% being the actual non-vote transactions.The daily non-vote transactions on Solana largely stayed below 40 million, only ever rising above this point at only two instances earlier in the month; on March 1 (40.02 million) and March 4 (40.59 million).
Solana transactions March charts
The lowest transaction count across the month was recorded on March 27, when the number of non-vote transactions fell to 20.15 million from 27.26 million the previous day.
Daily active wallets and new token accounts
The relationship between the number of daily active wallets and the count of new token accounts is more or less direct as wallets create token accounts. A single wallet could be tied to several token accounts.
At the start of the month, there were 618,950 active wallets on Solana, with the number of new token accounts created on the day being 469,390. March 31 qualified as the day with the highest number of active wallets (702,440), while the monthly low of 466,590 wallets was observed on March 8. The highest daily additional token accounts count, on the other hand, was seen on March 17 – 592,620 new accounts.
Tokens
Daily new SPL tokens (excluding NFTs)
The number of additional SPL tokens across March floated above 100 for the most part. The count was 185 on March 1 and fell twice below 100 before mid-month. The highest and lowest figures were recorded in the space of less than one week- 325 tokens on March 22 and 84 tokens on March 26.
Daily new NFTs
The number of new non-fungible tokens created on Solana on the first day of the month was 47,320, which bounced up and down before seeing a low of 24,910 on March 13. The last two days of the month recorded slightly higher figures, with the monthly peak of 69,330 coming on March 31.
Comparative to February, there were generally fewer new NFTs created per day in March. February also had a higher low and peak. The lowest and highest counts recorded in February were 36,910 and 95,990 new NFTs.
Solana token charts
Daily SPL token transfers (including NFTs, excluding wrapped SOL)
Across March, the number of successful token transfers dwelt above 5 million for most days, recording an 8.37 million peak on March 23 and a monthly low of 4.42 million three days later. The corresponding active token accounts were 478,250 and 453,370, respectively.
Notably, the figures in March didn’t reach the peak seen in February – the 10.67 million all-time high set on February 16. They, however, saw a higher trough than February’s – the least number of token transfers that month was 3.59 million (February 22).
Daily SOL transfers (including SOL and wrapped SOL)
Since the all-time peak on February 16, the number of SOL transfers have been falling lower by the day. Starting March 1 with 8.39 million transfers, the monthly summit was reached on March 3 – 9.83 million transfers, but this number progressively fell to clock 4.79 million transfers on March 26.
Network Metrics
Daily network fees for non-vote transactions
The Solana chain came into question a fortnight ago after Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin slammed its economic model as unsustainable. Lubin argued that the transaction fees charged are not reasonably adequate to reward on-chain validators. Here’s a look at how cheap transacting on Solana has been in March.
Solana fees chart
The all-time total fees incurred by users engaging in non-vote transactions stood at around 63,000 SOL as of March 31. Throughout the month, the daily network fees charged on the network has declined, though not consistently. The lowest daily network fee (105.63 SOL) was recorded on March 27 and was less than half the March peak of 216.39 SOL recorded on the third day of the month.
Daily active vote accounts
The historical daily increase in the number of active vote accounts continued in March. Overall, the number of vote accounts grew by 96 accounts, from 1,567 on March 1 to 1,663 on March 31.
DeFi Performance
Market share
Solana is currently fifth among chains with the highest DeFi market share. Its 3.62% market share at the start of the month ranked it sixth, a slump from third (its highest rank) last September. Markedly, the market share remained below this mark for the larger part of March. Solana, however, didn’t lose its rank as competing ecosystems were equally not better performers. On the contrary, the chain flipped Fantom for fifth on March 13, albeit with a lower market share of 3.38%.
Total Value Locked
Solana’s Total Value Locked (TVL) in March fell lower relative to February, whose figures were also lower than those in January. The TVL at the start of the month was $7.46 billion but fell to $6.59 billion on March 13 following a series of plunges. This figure peaked at $7.81 billion on the last day of the month.
Solana TVL chart
The majority of top protocols under Solana saw positive 1-month changes. The most notable exception is Serum, whose TVL shrunk by nearly 5% across the month. Marinade Finance (the most dominant with an 11.48% representation), Solend, and Raydium recorded positive changes in the month.
To learn more about Solana, visit our Investing in Solana guide.
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