On 16 March 2020 Solana’s genesis block was created. Cointelegraph recapped five key events in the history of the sixth-largest cryptocurrency.
Over the past five years the blockchain, launched by Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko and co-founder Raj Gokal, has processed more than 408bn transactions, including $987bn on DEXs. Network liveness is maintained by over 1,300 validators.
Birth in the COVID-19 era
Solana’s origins trace to late 2017, when Yakovenko released a white paper with the Proof-of-History consensus algorithm.
Its effective “start of life” came in March 2020, as the world grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic. The team raised $20m through a series of private token sales in July 2019, led by Multicoin Capital.
The network was dubbed an “Ethereum killer”. Twenty months after the TGE, at the peak of the 2020–2021 bull run, SOL’s capitalisation reached $77.8bn.
FTX’s collapse
By the end of 2022 the native coin’s combined market value had plunged 96% from the ATH, to $3bn. The drop was exacerbated by the collapse of FTX, which had acquired 58m SOL (~$7.4bn at present).
On 11 November 2022 the platform filed for bankruptcy. Management continues gradually unlocking coins worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
2023 marked the start of Solana’s revival, with capitalisation rising nearly 50-fold — from $3bn to more than $140bn by 19 January 2025.
The memecoin frenzy
In early 2024 the combined market value of several network memecoins such as BONK, WIF, FARTCOIN and PENGU reached several billion dollars.
“The ‘meme-token factory’” Pump.fun became one of the most popular crypto platforms for fans of such assets, collecting over $540m in fees over the past 12 months. On some days the daily figure exceeded Ethereum’s.
No Solana memecoin drew more attention than Official Trump (TRUMP), whose capitalisation in January soared to $14.6bn in two days before subsequently falling by ~85%.
The memecoin frenzy lifted the blockchain’s TVL to $14.2bn, putting Solana in second place. In the stablecoin rankings the network ranked third after Ethereum and Tron.
Across its five years the network has suffered repeated outages, halting block production for up to 30 hours. Validators had to restart the blockchain.
This year a new client, Firedancer, is expected as an alternative to QUIC, which failed to process transactions on Solana more than a dozen times.
Crypto phone
In May 2023 the team released the first Web3-focused smartphone, Solana Saga. Sales of the Android-based device with a built-in crypto wallet began slowly but surged after the BONK airdrop.
In September 2024 developers unveiled a new smartphone, Solana Seeker, designed for convenient memecoin trading and reward accrual. Each device includes a unique soulbound token, Seeker Genesis, which grants access to third-party rewards, offers and content across the ecosystem.
Trump’s digital-asset fund
On 6 March 2025 US President Donald Trump signed an order providing for the creation of a reserve of altcoins, including SOL. The fund will hold coins confiscated by the Treasury in criminal and civil cases; direct purchases are not envisaged.
At the time of writing Solana trades at $128.84. Compared with the record $293.31, the price has fallen by 56.2%.
In March the cryptocurrency’s price first in roughly three years fell below realised value. Amid a waning memecoin hype there has been a sharp decline in the ecosystem’s TVL and Solana’s on-chain revenues.
Some traders expect a potential shift in the SOL/ETH ratio, as a string of scandals around coins such as TRUMP and LIBRA dents the reputation of the “people’s cryptocurrency” ecosystem.