Howdy!

I’ve been on a personal journey to realizing that Americanos are a beautiful merger between drip coffee and espresso, and I’m increasingly convinced Americano haters have been brainwashed by Big Europe. This isn’t crypto-relevant at all, but I figured I’d share it anyway.

Today, we’ve got Solana’s birthday, sandwich stats, and SOL futures:

Happy belated, Solana!

Yesterday marked the five-year anniversary of Solana's genesis block. To celebrate, we're taking a look back at half a decade's worth of accomplishments within our ecosystem.​

The beginning

You've heard all about the ups and downs of Solana's early days from us already — its architectural breakthroughs, the major downturn post-FTX, and its return to form as a comeback king. You can read more about it in our recent three part series here, here, and here. We also recently wrote about the technical innovations behind the network's proof-of-history mechanism here.

Data and analytics

Activity has boomed over the past five years. Just to name a few number-heavy milestones, Solana has processed over 400 billion transactions, facilitated DEX trading volume approaching $1 trillion, and expanded its validator network to thousands of active nodes. The network's total value locked (TVL) reached an all-time high of $14.2 billion on January 18, 2025 — though global market downturns have brought its TVL below $9 billion at time of publication. Even so, Solana remains one of the most patronized blockchains, with a 30-day volume reaching $110 billion. The network's native token, SOL, achieved an all-time high of $295.40 in January 2025; a remarkable increase from its initial seed sale price of $0.04 in 2018. As of March 17, 2025, SOL is trading at approximately $127.45.

Technical evolution

From 2020 to 2024, the implementation of features such as Gulf Stream, Turbine, and Sealevel have allowed for rapid transaction processing and parallel execution, distinguishing Solana from other layer-1 networks. Firedancer, an independent validator client developed by Jump Crypto, is on track to further solidify performance. Similarly, state compression has redefined what’s possible for onchain data storage, significantly reducing costs for NFTs and tokenized assets. And of course, the introduction of priority fees and the QUIC protocol has alleviated network congestion, transforming a once-pressing issue into a non-factor.

Concepts that defined the culture

Culture has probably shaped Solana's identity just as much as its codebase. Back in 2021, the NFT marketplace Magic Eden became a cornerstone of the then-booming NFT ecosystem. Projects like DeGods and Mad Lads emerged in 2022, pushing Solana NFTs into the mainstream. The launch of BONK that same year turned speculation into mass excitement, laying the groundwork for an explosion of memecoin assets in 2024. Fast forward to 2023 to find Solana Mobile's introduction of Saga — a first-of-its-kind attempt to bring crypto-native experiences to a smartphone. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have also flourished, with platforms like Realms providing frameworks for decentralized governance. 

Problems and failures

Not everything comes up roses, of course. The ecosystem has faced frequent challenges from rugpulls, hacks, scams and spam, with proliferation of these issues growing in tandem with the community's popularity. On the technical side, early outages were a persistent critique, and while recent fixes have dramatically improved stability, those past failures are not forgotten. The 17-hour outage in September 2021, caused by transaction overload, and the multi-hour downtimes in 2022 due to bot spam, offline transaction bugs, and consensus failures, highlighted the network’s early instability. Meanwhile, the memecoin explosion in 2024 brought on a wave of pump-and-dump schemes, mostly exploiting platforms like pump.fun. There's always going to be growing pains that reflect the challenges of rapid adoption. These difficulties have led to stronger fraud detection measures, better security tooling and (perhaps this is generous, but) a more cautious investor mindset.

What's next?

Looking ahead, Solana remains poised for growth. The upcoming launch of Solana futures by CME Group on March 17, 2025 (that's today!) signifies increasing institutional interest and provides new avenues for investment and hedging. The potential approval of Solana-based ETFs is additionally likely to open the doors for broader market participation. Continuing enhancements to the network's scalability will likely also attract more developers and projects to the ecosystem. Firedancer, which has already demonstrated significant performance improvements in test environments, is on track to launch, promising to further plus-up efficiency and fortify against congestion and outages. 

As we celebrate this milestone, it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate how far Solana has come — from an ambitious experiment to one of the most battle-tested and dynamic ecosystems in the space. Through crashes and comebacks, Solana has continually defied expectations. So let’s all raise a glass to five years of resilience, reinvention and relentless forward momentum. Here’s to the next five years and beyond.

— Jeffrey Albus

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Ghost just released a stellar updated Solana sandwich attack dashboard:

This chart has been a favorite of mine: You can see how much value is extracted by sandwich attackers — who essentially frontrun user transactions to deliver worse prices and pocket the difference — relative to a protocol’s swap volume.

Memecoin favorites Trojan, BullX, and Moonshot all see relatively large amounts of sandwiching — no surprise there. I’m somewhat more surprised by venture darling Solana wallet Phantom, which has a pretty significant amount of value being extracted by sandwich attacks.

— Jack Kubinec

Solana futures began trading today on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The derivatives products — which let investors speculate on the future price of SOL — offer 25 SOL and 500 SOL contracts. 

The day one inflows have been nothing to write home about. Investors bought 65 SOL futures contracts and 41 Micro SOL futures contracts by CME Group’s count. Still, the significance isn’t the futures themselves but what the futures could prefigure. US regulators have taken the view that crypto assets need a regulated market of significant size before allowing spot ETFs to begin trading, so SOL futures could help check that box.

But investors will need to buy a whole lot more than 100 derivatives contracts before the asset’s regulated market can claim to have significant size. SOL futures, anyone?

— Jack Kubinec

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A message from Usman Saleem, co-founder and CEO of ORO: