Retail Wallets Drive Unprecedented Surge as Solana Shatters 12-Month Token Creation Record in January

Solana's network just hit a fever pitch—retail wallets are running the show, pushing token creations to a level not seen in over a year. Forget the institutional slow lane; this is a grassroots crypto explosion.

The Main Street Takeover

Retail activity isn't just participating; it's dominating. Individual wallets are fueling the engine, creating tokens at a breakneck pace that institutional players can't match. This isn't about waiting for Wall Street's nod—it's about builders and users seizing the tools and going for it.

Breaking the 12-Month Ceiling

January wasn't just another month. It marked a definitive high point, setting a new 12-month peak for tokens born on the chain. The network processed creations that eclipsed anything from the past year, signaling a developer rush and user adoption spike that's rewriting the playbook.

Why This Isn't a Fluke

The surge cuts through the typical market noise. It bypasses the speculative froth and points directly to utility—people are using the chain to create real, if nascent, digital assets. It’s a testament to a platform that actually works when you need it to, unlike some legacy finance systems that seem to freeze faster than a banker's smile.

The momentum is undeniable. Retail is building the future, one token at a time, while the old guard is left checking its spreadsheets. This is how networks grow up—not from the top down, but from the edges in.

Despite the market slowdown and loss of trust in altcoins, solana remains a venue of liquidity, allowing for short-term trading and significant expansion for some of the tokens. 

Small holders are the most relentless Solana traders

While the BTC and ETH market is dominated by whales and whale-sized orders, Solana attracts small holders. The current meme season is much less active in terms of trading volumes, mostly due to the fact that few tokens reach outsized valuations. 

Most of the newly launched and traded assets rarely pass a $30М valuation. There are also fewer attempts to create cults or long-term holder projects. 

January’s spike in activity was mostly driven by small-scale traders, with a moderate inflow of medium-sized wallets. Whales were the least influential cohort in the trenches. 

Over time, small holders also retained their levels of Solana token holdings, while medium and whale-sized traders divested their portfolios. 

More than 135K small-scale wallets hold Solana memes, while only around 35K medium-sized wallets retain a meme portfolio. Whales are even more rare, with only 2,066 large-scale wallets. Those holders may be teams or buyers from previous meme cycles. The overall valuation of Solana memes declined to $4.7B, boosted by legacy memes like TRUMP, BONK, and PENGU. 

Day-to-day activity, however, hinges on the latest hot token, with daily runners gaining over 100%. Those tokens may be short-lived or go through boom and bust cycles, but traders try to avoid the long-term decline from holding. 

Pump.fun activity picked up in January

Pump.fun continued to expand its activity, concluding a strong month in January. The app was back in the top 5 of fee producers, with $107.5M for January, the highest fee level since September 2025. 

Graduating tokens also ROSE in the past four weeks, to over 280 daily on average. Token graduations signaled more attempts to create longer-lived assets, rather than crashing the token during the initial launchpad trading stage.

Despite the higher activity, SOL remained weak. The asset dipped under $100 and continued to slide, recently retreating to $95.22. Briefly, SOL broke below $95 for the first time since February 2024.

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