In December, Solana’s monthly active addresses and new addresses rose to annual highs as SOL’s price climbed.
On December 24, the token price rose to around $118 for the first time since April 2022. At the time of writing, the asset was trading just above $113, with a year-over-year gain of more than 890% (CoinGecko).
According to The Block, the number of monthly active addresses surpassed the January record of 15.24 million. The metric reached 15.66 million a week before December ended.
A similar movement was demonstrated by the new-address metric, which in December reached 6.78 million. This is higher than the entire May — 6.65 million.
Experts explained the surge in activity in the network that underpins Solana’s growth by a wave of memetokens led by BONK. By year-end the stream of new airdrops shows no sign of slowing.
However, not all on-chain metrics rose in tandem. For example, the number of transactions involving SOL transfers declined to 578 million in December. At the April year-high the figure stood at 811 million.
The total value locked in DeFi protocols on Solana surpassed $1.42 billion (DeFi Llama). The year-over-year rise stood at 130%. In the ranking by this metric, the blockchain platform rose to fifth place, though it started the year outside the top 10.
Earlier, the hype around the BONK mem-token distribution led to a shortage of Saga smartphones from Solana Labs. In early December, the head of the company Anatoliy Yakovenko admitted weak smartphone sales.