Solana SOL (1) is outpacing Ethereum (2) in daily user transactions, according to on-chain data from the second quarter of 2022, despite several challenges from macroeconomic factors and network disruptions. According to Nansen’s State of the Quarter Report (3), Solana’s daily transactions steadily climbed throughout the second quarter, reaching more than 40 million daily transactions as opposed to Ethereum’s 1 million daily transactions between April and June.
Daily non-vote transactions showed a large rise in daily transactions when compared to Ethereum, and the on-chain statistics showed that decentralized exchanges were more active despite the higher volatility. The top three decentralized apps (DApps) responsible for the increase in daily transactions are Mango Markets, Serum, and Switchboard, a decentralized oracle network (4).
When voting transactions were included, Solana found that there were between 100 million and 200 million transactions each day, which was corroborated by an increase in the total number of wallets from 400,000 to over 1 million by the end of May 2022. Another factor contributing to Solana’s exponential growth is a series of investments made starting in mid-2022 to support the GameFi, DeFi, and NFT ecosystems for non-fungible tokens.
According to Mega Septiandara (5), the Solana ecosystem is booming, whether it be because of the Korea grant and investment fund or several planned events embracing new infrastructure and users.
Although a recent governance proposal from October 2022 highlighted the possibility of Helium (6)—a blockchain network for the Internet of Things—transitioning to Solana, Helium developers recommended a shift to improve operational efficiency and scalability, emphasizing the need to fix several technical issues to improve the network capabilities.
While the network’s recent months have been difficult for its users due to lower proof-of-coverage activity brought on by the network’s size, the stress on the blockchain and validators, and packet delivery concerns. If approved, the Solana blockchain would also receive the helium-based HNT, IoT, MOBILE, and Data Credits DC coins.