Meme decline, narrative cooling: losing the $80 mark, has Solana's cycle bonus ended?

Article by: Ma He, Foresight News

One of the most successful public blockchains, Solana, is also facing a winter.

Since the market crash on February 5, Solana’s token SOL briefly dropped to $67, hitting a new low since December 2023. As of now, the latest price is $80, down 3.57% in 24 hours. From the monthly chart, SOL has been declining for five consecutive months since its peak in October 2025, with a maximum drop of over 71%. The most famous NFT in this ecosystem, Mad Lads, saw its floor price drop to 22 SOL, about $1,760, while at its peak, this NFT was worth over $40,000.

Looking back at this bull run, SOL rose from a low of $8 to $295, performing quite well among public chains. Coupled with the explosion of the Meme sector, even U.S. President Trump chose to launch his token on the Solana network, creating countless wealth stories.

However, as the market turned bearish, prices fell, TVL was halved, on-chain trading volume plummeted, and growth momentum stalled, Solana also faced various issues.

Meme Boom Ends

During this cycle, the Meme craze started on Solana. From late 2024 to early 2025, Solana sparked a “Meme Summer” with Pump.fun platform, with new tokens issued daily exceeding 10,000 at times, and peak trading volume surpassing $6 billion. Meme tokens like Dogwifhat and Bonk saw their market caps soar, pushing Solana’s overall activity to a peak. The peak was reached when Trump launched TRUMP, setting a historical high of $295. But as scams and the wealth effect waned, starting mid-2025, the Meme craze cooled down, with many projects having less than 2% graduation rates, and capital began to flow out.

Data from Defilama shows that Pump.fun, a Meme platform, hit record trading volumes around 2025. Weekly trading volume twice exceeded $3 billion, then steadily declined. By early 2026, its trading volume hovered around $500 million, only one-sixth of its peak.

Meanwhile, some Meme traffic shifted to BNB Chain. BNB Chain rapidly rose via the Four.Meme platform. In the second half of 2025, Chinese-themed Meme tokens like “Binance Life” and “I’m Coming” triggered FOMO, with BNB Chain’s Meme market cap growing from nearly zero to hundreds of millions of dollars, and 24-hour trading volume reaching $460 million. In comparison, Solana’s Meme market cap still remained in the billions but stagnated, with many projects dropping over 95% from their peaks.

In October 2025, BNB Chain temporarily replaced Solana on the trending Meme list, showing clear capital rotation: when BNB Chain Meme surged, Solana’s funds shrank; after BNB Chain declined, some funds flowed back, but the momentum was weaker. Additionally, under the influence of key figures like CZ and He Yi, BNB Chain experienced short-term growth, while Pump.fun on Solana, despite its early advantage, weakened due to narrative exhaustion and lack of new capital.

The end of the Meme wave means decreased demand for its public chain tokens.

Coldening of Public Chain Narratives

Furthermore, the overall cooling of public chain narratives further weakened Solana’s ecosystem expansion plans. Between 2025 and 2026, the crypto market retreated from early high leverage and overextended narratives. Many weak narratives like celebrity tokens and Meme hype quickly faded, shifting focus to more practical and institutionally supported areas. Solana’s “high-speed blockchain” narrative once attracted developers, but as the market entered a “value deep water zone,” investors preferred mainstream assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, viewing them as “digital gold” or “settlement layers,” leading to an ongoing bear market and increased capital outflows from Solana.

This narrative fatigue reflects a shift in competition from pure TPS metrics to ecosystem maturity and regulatory adaptability. Solana’s previous advantages in TPS and ecosystem have been diluted. Whether in Meme or airdrop incentives, Solana’s appeal to new users has weakened.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s mainnet speed has significantly improved, further diminishing Solana’s core advantage. Through the 2025 Fusaka upgrade, Ethereum increased data blob capacity from 3 to 6-9, and introduced PeerDAS, greatly reducing transaction fees and increasing throughput. As a result, transaction volume and active addresses rebounded.

Data shows that DEX trading volume on Ethereum surged around the end of 2025. In 2026, the Glamsterdam upgrade will enable near-perfect parallel processing, further accelerating block validation and lowering fees, bringing the mainnet closer to an “operating system” level. These improvements have pushed Ethereum’s TPS and costs near Solana’s levels, while maintaining higher security and decentralization, reducing the need for users to switch to Solana.

Another rising competitor, Base, is also growing rapidly, especially with AI tokens attracting many users. According to DefiLlama, its TVL remains around $4 billion.

In the era of tokenization, RWA (Real-World Assets) are increasingly happening on Ethereum, further marginalizing Solana’s ecosystem. As of February 12, 2026, data from rwa.xyz shows that RWA assets on Ethereum’s mainnet totaled $14.9 billion, while Solana’s RWA assets amounted to only $1.7 billion, a significant gap. The trend toward tokenizing RWAs emphasizes stability and compliance, and Ethereum’s leading position makes it difficult for Solana to compete.

Digital Asset Treasury Buying Cannot Offset Overall Bear Market Selling Pressure

From the perspective of Digital Asset Treasury (DAT), in 2025, DAT was all the rage. Many publicly traded companies like Forward Industries, Upexi, and Sharps Technology engaged in private placements or debt issuance, heavily purchasing SOL as treasury assets.

By 2026, as SOL’s price fell from a peak of around $200 in 2025 to about $80, the market value of these DAT companies shrank significantly. For example, Forward Industries spent $1.58 billion to buy SOL, now worth only $555 million, shaking investor confidence.

Additionally, the DAT buying frenzy slowed, new companies joining the market decreased, and although early SOL purchases reduced circulating supply, they could not offset the overall bearish market pressure.

Bitcoin and Ethereum prices also suffered heavy declines in recent months of the bear market. BTC fell from $126,000 to $67,000, ETH from $4,900 to $2,000.

In January 2026, Solana founder Toly posted a Chinese tweet on X asking: “What do you think is Solana’s biggest challenge right now?” The comment section offered diverse feedback, including: lack of direct exchanges, limited perception of other products beyond Meme, and more.

Perhaps Solana will find its own way to overcome these challenges.