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Token trading on Solana decentralized exchanges briefly flipped that of Ethereum exchanges in December as meme coin mania raged, and now it’s happened again—this time ascribed to an impending token airdrop.
As of Sunday night, rolling 24-hour trading volume on Solana-based decentralized exchanges (DEXes) topped Ethereum exchanges, according to data from DeFi Llama, with about $705 million on Solana during the span compared to $698 million on Ethereum.
Ethereum is back on top as of this writing, but the networks remain close: DeFi Llama shows about $742 million in Ethereum DEX trading over the last 24 hours, while Solana remains steady right around $705 million. Ethereum is well ahead in terms of seven-day volume, however, at $8.9 billion compared to less than $4.5 billion for Solana.
Even so, the recent short-lived reversals show that the long-dominant Ethereum is facing increasing pressure from Solana, as the rival chain offers much cheaper and faster transactions. That was the case in December when trading on Solana meme coins like BONK and Dogwifhat (WIF) helped spike DEX volume.
Now, the culprit appears to be the impending launch of JUP, the official token of the popular Solana decentralized exchange aggregator Jupiter. It’s set to debut on Wednesday with nearly a million wallets eligible to claim a share of JUP tokens.
According to data from CoinGecko, Solana trading volume on Jupiter topped that of leading Ethereum DEX Uniswap V3 late Sunday, though much like with the broader chains, those places have already swapped as of Monday morning.
Uniswap V3 has over $629 million worth of trading volume over the past 24 hours, while Jupiter has about $571 million in DEX trading on Solana during that span.
It’s unclear whether any recent trading will actually factor into Jupiter airdrop eligibility, however, as the protocol took a snapshot of early users on November 2. It said that some 955,000 wallets would be eligible for the eventual drop, which is now set to take place on Wednesday. However, Jupiter has additional tokens planned for future airdrops.
Jupiter’s launchpad was used for last week’s WEN meme coin drop as a test run ahead of the JUP drop. More than a million wallets were eligible for the WEN airdrop, though the claim only lasted until Monday morning—with over 280 billion WEN left unclaimed.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.