Last month, Ethereum reclaimed its title as the leading smart contract blockchain for decentralized exchange (DEX) trading, as the market swoon dampened activity on Solana, the go-to platform for memecoin traders.
Ethereum-based DEXes registered an industry-leading cumulative trading volume of $64.616 billion in March, beating Solana’s tally of $52.62 billion by 22%, according to data source DefiLama. This marks the first time since September that Ethereum topped the charts, pushing Solana to the number two spot.
The change in leadership occurred as the total crypto market capitalization fell 4.2% to $2.63 trillion, extending February’s 20% loss. The backdrop of macroeconomic uncertainty and disappointment regarding the lack of fresh Bitcoin purchases in the U.S. strategic reserve contributed significantly to Bitcoin slipping below $80,000.
The prevailing bearish market sentiment dampened speculation across the broader landscape, particularly within the memecoin sector. This decline was starkly reflected in the significant decrease in activity on Raydium, the leading Solana-based DEX and a hotspot for meme trading in late 2024.
Throughout March, Raydium did not log a single day with trading volume exceeding $1 billion, highlighting a considerable decrease from its record high of $13 billion on January 18, according to DefiLlama data.
Moreover, daily volume on the Solana-based memecoin launch pad averaged less than $100 million in March, sharply down from a peak of $390 million in mid-January. Activity on Solana-based DEXes reached its zenith with the debut of President Donald Trump’s TRUMP token in January.
On the other hand, Ethereum’s outperformance was notably driven by Uniswap, which achieved over $30 billion in trading volume, with Fluid following in a distant second position with $9 billion in activity.
However, Ethereum’s ether token itself fell over 18% to $1,822 in March, registering bigger losses than Solana’s SOL token, which fell by 15.8%, per data from TradingView and CoinDesk.
Observers suggest that ether’s inflationary tokenomics and the increasing popularity of Layer 2 solutions, which reportedly siphon activity away from the main chain, are responsible for ether’s subpar performance.
