Growth in a burgeoning virtual currency called ‘memedollar’ is being cited by major blockchains as a key driver of soaring revenues for decentralized applications (dApps) built using the Solana Development Foundation’s open source smart contract platform.
In November 2024, Solana’s decentralized application (DApp) ecosystem reported a new revenue record of about $365 million, based on a report by Syndica. Driven mainly by meme coin activity and tools, the layer-1 blockchain recorded earnings of 8.6 million dollars per month, which was the largest monthly income of the blockchain.
The dominant contributor to solana’s total revenue, was their decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, good for 84%. Less than 15% was accounted for by other areas, namely wallets and infrastructure.
Solana’s Meme Coins and Bots Boost DApp Revenue
Meme coin platforms and protocols exploded throughout DeFi. In 2024, meme coin DApps together generated $500m in income, reports Syndica, with its corresponding revenue up 305 fold over the past year.
In November, Solana’s top revenue generating protocol was Pump.fun which collected $106 million. Their achievement marks a turning point in the blockchain’s ecosystem as meme projects gain more and more power.
In that sense, Solana’s revenue was also driven by Telegram bots. Trojan, Banana Gun, BONKbot are these tools which helped to invest meme coins directly into Telegram. The bots brought in more than $300 million in revenue throughout 2024, trailing only meme coin DApps for the second largest income stream on the network.
Solana is also not just meme coins as its ecosystem is growing with more and more high revenue projects. The rise in DApps with monthly revenue between $10K and $10M, as well as a broader diversification within the network, were highlighted by Syndica.
One of the emerging segments is that of Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN). According to Syndica’s analysis, this sector, which uses blockchain’s resources to provide real world services such as servers, is in infancy and promises future growth in revenue.
November’s record setting performance firmly establishes Solana as one of the leading blockchains for DApps, driven with help of meme coins and related tools. Yet, its development across disparate sectors points to a larger role on the decentralized finance canvas and beyond.
Protocols such as Render, Nosana, Helium, and Hivemapper have recently seen strong demand for their services, driving notable revenue growth. Render’s decentralized compute network is currently the largest revenue driver in the DePIN sector. Syndica report
