Solana DEX Trading Volume Drops to $2.61B, Lowest Since Mid-December

Solana DEX’s trading volume dropped to $2.61 billion on February 16, continuing its downward trajectory and reaching its lowest level since mid-December.

While Raydium’s volume plunged by over 45% and Orca’s fell by nearly 30% in the past week, Meteora bucked the trend with an 18% increase.

According to the data compiled by DeFiLlama, Solana’s decentralized exchanges (DEXs) saw around $20.2 billion in trading volume for the week ending February 16, continuing a five-week decline. The leading Layer 1 solution’s on-chain transaction volume dropped by 28% in the previous week as it hit $31.8 billion by February 10th. The decreasing activity on Solana DEXs aligns with a broader market downturn.

Meteora reported the most activity as the top DEX with a volume of $658 million, closely following Raydium at $836.37 million. Orca is in the third spot with $544.4 million.

The drop in Solana’s DEX volume is also partly due to the fading enthusiasm for meme coin trading, which had surged since the start of the bull run. With numerous meme coins emerging and disappearing, traders appear to be growing weary of the repeated pump-and-dump cycles, rug pulls, and instances of insider trading.

A similar sentiment was echoed by CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Junior, who said that meme coins are negatively affecting the Solana ecosystem, with recent events further shaking investor confidence. A major rug pull involving LIBRA has intensified concerns, contributing to SOL’s decline – falling by more than 10% in the past week and down 40% from its peak in January.

Adding to market pressures, 11.2 million SOL will be unlocked on March 1. These tokens were initially sold off during FTX’s bankruptcy and later acquired by firms like Galaxy, Pantera, and Figure.