Author | Mu Mu
Produced by｜Baihua Blockchain
Due to Solana's outstanding performance in this round of market trends, many people believe that this round of bull market is Solana's bull market. Looking at Solana's development history in the past few years, whether it is taking advantage of the DeFi Summer and Wall Street's entry into the market, or grabbing the Meme craze as a life-saving straw and "returning as a king" after FTX went bankrupt and got into trouble, all of these make people feel that Solana's fortune is too good.
However, a giant like FTX can fall overnight, and Meme also has its ups and downs. Recently, Meme has shown obvious signs of "ebbing", coupled with the upcoming super-large unlocking, it can be said that misfortunes never come alone. Solana is under increasing pressure. Is its "good luck" really used up?
01. Meme Tide Decline
Recently, on-chain data showed that Solana’s on-chain transaction volume has dropped rapidly since February, and the number of launches on related platforms such as Meme has dropped sharply. Popular projects in the Solana ecosystem have all fallen sharply, and various FUD voices have begun to appear on social platforms.
Meme originally rose amid calls for "anti-VC", "no takeover", and "fair launch". However, after the rise of the Meme craze, various institutions took advantage of the situation to become "big players" and quickly occupied favorable ecological niches. The crypto community soon discovered that without continuous capital injection, Meme, which relied solely on fair launch, was like a flash in the pan. As a result, most people threw themselves into the arms of various institutions and took over their business.
Then, the President Coin, which represents the top celebrities, was born. The Trump Family Token first quickly drained the liquidity in the market, and then the Mile Token came on the scene and dealt a heavy blow. Afterwards, people gradually discovered that there was a trading team behind these celebrity projects, and some were even related to each other. There was an invisible big hand behind each hot project, and the crypto community suddenly felt that it was being pressed to the ground and rubbed repeatedly. Some KOLs bluntly said that our crypto community just wants to get out of the circle, not to let celebrities outside the circle come in and withdraw money...
Ultimately, the Meme craze and the bursting of the bubble have exposed the "evil" of human nature. Greedy retail investors' excessive speculation will always be the "buyers". This has dealt a huge blow to the Meme market, and it is like a blow to the Solana ecosystem, which has benefited from the Meme craze and has gained a rapid upward momentum. The relationship between them is self-evident.
02. A large amount of unlocking that came at an extremely inappropriate time
While we were still immersed in the sadness of the Meme’s decline, another desperate news came: “11.2 million SOL will be unlocked on March 1st.” At first, people mistakenly thought that this was the unlocking planned in the Token economic model. Usually, this kind of unlocking is a planned small-scale unlocking, which has little impact on the market. However, this large-scale unlocking is the second wave of blows brought by FTX’s bankruptcy. Simply put, these 11.2 million SOLs are part of the tokens sold during the FTX liquidation process. These tokens are set with a certain lock-up period (Vesting Schedule) during trading, usually 1-3 years, and the lock-up period expires in March 2025, so they enter the circulation market.
After FTX went bankrupt in November 2022, the huge amount of SOL held by its affiliate Alameda Research became part of the liquidation assets. It is estimated that FTX/Alameda initially held about 58 million SOL, accounting for 10%-15% of Solana's total supply at the time. The bankruptcy trustee (led by John J. Ray III) then sold these tokens to institutional investors at a discount. It is reported that the institutions that bought these tokens at the time included Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Figure Markets and other institutions. Based on information on X and on-chain data (such as Lookonchain tracking), the market estimates that these tokens will be sold at a price of about US$60-80 per token (30-40% of the current market price).
Since the 11.2 million SOLs that are about to be unlocked were purchased at a low discount by institutions, the market expects that if no one takes over the off-market orders to quickly absorb them, SOL will likely be under huge selling pressure after unlocking. The current pressure has already been applied to the current market price and the Solana ecological community.
03. Is Solana’s benefits over?
So has Solana’s good luck really run out? It seems not. Whether it is the Solana spot ETF that is expected to be passed this year or Trump’s series of crypto-friendly policies, they can be regarded as the continuation of Solana’s good luck.
The Solana spot ETF, which may be approved as early as June this year, is highly anticipated. Currently, on a well-known prediction platform, the probability of Solana ETF being approved in 2025 is 84%, and the probability of being approved before June 31 is 38%. Judging from the performance of the two spot ETFs that have been approved before, the Bitcoin spot ETF currently holds more than 110 billion US dollars, and the Ethereum spot ETF holds more than 10 billion US dollars. Judging from Solana's institutional support rate, at least billions of US dollars will flow in, so it will naturally be easy to cover the negative impact of the unlocking of 11.2 million coins. However, the problem is that the unlocking is imminent, and the ETF will take at least a few months to pass.
Trump's series of friendly policies are actually being implemented step by step, which is a friendly regulatory environment for the entire crypto industry. Thanks to the accelerated catalysis of the Meme craze, the Solana ecosystem has also been remarkable. At the beginning of 2025, the transaction volume of DEX on the Solana chain once exceeded that of Ethereum, which can be regarded as successfully passing the stress test, and both the number of users and the activity have strong momentum.
In addition, Solana's developer community is growing very fast. Coupled with the iterative upgrades planned in Solana's future roadmap, which will improve the existing deficiencies in technical solutions, its ecosystem continues to attract more and more attention. Some top institutions such as Paypal and Franklin Templeton have also joined in the adoption.
04. Summary
Whether the meme craze is cooling down or large amounts of unlocking are actually short-term "pains", which are very common in the crypto field. It cannot be concluded that Solana will fall. Moreover, when its ecological development momentum is good, it has encountered the favorable wind of crypto-friendly supervision, which is even more favorable for the number one public chain founded in the United States. As for the longer-term future, we will wait for more tests brought by time.
