Solana Crushes Competition: #1 in Real Value & DEX Volume for H1 2025

Move over, Ethereum—Solana just schooled the crypto class.

The speed demon eats market share

While legacy chains gasp under congestion, SOL's blistering TPS and laughably low fees vacuumed up traders. DEX volumes? Obliterated. Real-world adoption metrics? To the moon. The 'ETH killer' narrative isn't just FUD anymore.

But wait—there's a catch

Sure, the tech's sexy. But let's see how those validator rewards hold up when Wall Street's algo-traders finish front-running retail. Again.

One thing's clear: In the race for blockchain supremacy, Solana isn't just leading—it's rewriting the rules.

Daily transactions top 160M

The report noted that the fee structure allowed Solana to absorb traffic spikes, such as January’s TRUMP memecoin frenzy, while maintaining a median fee of nearly $0.003. 

The network processed approximately 162 million transactions daily, with an average slot time of around 390 milliseconds (ms), and has not halted since February 2024. 

According to the report, the upcoming Alpenglow consensus code, currently in the testing phase, aims for a finality of 100 to 150 ms and reduces validator breakeven capital to approximately $75,000.

The total value locked averaged between $8 billion and $9 billion during the first half of 2025, with an 18% quarter-on-quarter increase, placing Solana second only to Ethereum. 

Jupiter’s platform for perpetual swaps handled approximately $1 billion in daily volume and accounted for 79% of the on-chain perps market, while Trading Bots executed roughly half of all swaps.

Liquid staking token JITOSOL kept about 39% of the staking share. The network settled 81% of all DEX trades in 2024 and cleared $890 billion in DEX trading volume during the first five months of 2025.

Real-world traction expands off-chain reach

The stablecoin float on Solana increased from $1.5 billion to $11.7 billion in 18 months, with Circle minting $1.75 billion in USDC in May alone.

Telecom app Helium Mobile added approximately 300,000 subscribers in the first quarter.

The report added that crowdsourced-mapping project Hivemapper covered 30% of the global roads, and the tokenized-asset marketplace Baxus logged an 11,500% increase in crypto payments, alongside a 50-fold rise in overseas buyers.