Solana ‘drinking the Ethereum milkshake’ as DEX market share rises: OKX
2025-01-30
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Solana has surged to dominate nearly half of the decentralized exchange (DEX) market, largely driven by the memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, which has seen more volume than the Ethereum network in recent weeks, says crypto exchange OKX.
Solana’s DEX dominance rise is attributed to its “blazing transaction speeds, minimal costs, and developer-centric tools,” OKX said in its Jan. 28 The State of DEXs 2025 report.
It said Solana was “drinking the Ethereum milkshake,” as Dune Analytics figures show it briefly obtained an 89.7% DEX market share in the last week of December, and its share has remained above 50% over the last five weeks.
OKX claimed Solana’s dominance in the DEX domain can be sustained over the long run despite pump.fun volumes varying enormously every week.
“Solana blows every other chain out of the park” by almost all measures, OKX said, citing transaction fees, transaction count, active wallet address and active DEX users.
“Solana is truly the retail chain.”
The Solana-native DEX, Jupiter, has accounted for nearly 70% of Solana’s DEX volume, and OKX praised the platform for optimizing slippage, providing accurate real-time pricing data and minimizing platform risks.
A sizable portion of Solana’s DEX volume came from US President Donald Trump’s memecoin that launched two days before his Jan. 20 inauguration, which was followed up with another memecoin from his wife Melania the next day.
The Official Trump and MELANIA memecoins surpassed a combined market cap above $20 billion at peak levels.
OKX said, however, that Ethereum and its layer 2s still dominate weekly volume per address and average trade size — suggesting that whales are more active on Ethereum.
Ethereum has tokenized 82% of the more than $5 billion real-world assets on blockchains, while Solana accounts for a 2.5% share, Dune Analytics data from 21Shares shows.
OKX added Ethereum also leads in “liquidity pool quality” due to its size in total value locked, while Solana’s liquidity is far smaller.
“Whether Solana’s low TVL, high-volume model is a temporary market anomaly or a feature of its ecosystem’s resilience will depend on how it adapts to changing market conditions and continues attracting liquidity and development,” OKX said.
OKX added that Ethereum remains the “bedrock” for decentralized finance innovation and that some of its layer 2s are beginning to compete with Solana’s low fees and high-speed transaction capabilities.