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Solana is $200! Wait, no it’s not. Wait, yes it is. Wait, no it’s not.

Today, we’ll cover the five biggest Solana moments of the year (so far) and some big staking news from REX-Osprey. Let's get into it.

5 biggest Solana moments of 2025 (so far)

We’re more than halfway into what may prove to be Solana’s most memorable year to date. And my, how fast the year is going by! Before it slips away altogether, here are my five biggest Solana moments of 2025 thus far:

5. Raydium spins up its own launchpad

In February, news slowly trickled out that the Solana memecoin cash cow Pump.fun was going to be ending its unofficial partnership with Raydium and launching an AMM of its own.

This closed what had been a very lucrative pairing for Raydium, which had made tens of millions of dollars from Pump.fun tokens to that point.

So, Raydium swung back and created a memecoin launchpad of its own. After a slow start, the gambit seems to be working: Raydium-supported letsbonk.fun raced to over 50% of launchpad market share two weeks ago.

4. Pump.fun announces a token

When I started hearing Pump.fun wanted to raise $1 billion by selling a token, first I went “What?”, and then I went, “Huh?”

Sure enough, we first reported that the ICO would be carried out at a $4 billion valuation. Many complained that the action was extractive from a business that has already generated nearly a billion dollars in trading fees. 

But the market didn’t mind too much: Pump.fun exceeded $1 billion in private and public sales for PUMP when all was said and done.

3. SIMD-228 defeated

In January, Multicoin Capital’s Tushar Jain came on Lightspeed to pitch SIMD-0228, a proposal to cut Solana’s token inflation rate and introduce a market-based inflation mechanism. 

This was the most voted-on Solana proposal ever, and a number of smaller validators were concerned about tighter margins stemming from fewer inflation rewards. Others expressed worries about uncertain outcomes the proposal may have created.

In the end, somewhat surprisingly, the proposal — which had support from several key figures in Solana — failed to pass.

2. Trump launches a memecoin

It’s tough to top this one. On Friday night before his inauguration, the incoming POTUS launched a memecoin on Solana.

Solana experienced severe congestion as traders raced to buy the coin, and SOL climbed to an all-time high. The token had interesting downstream effects, like suddenly spiking Solana’s USDC supply. 

Solana folks generally take pride in the fact that although many of us wish he had not launched a memecoin at all, at least Donald Trump launched his memecoin on Solana.

1. Alpenglow

At the Solana Accelerate conference in May, Anza announced Solana’s biggest upgrade ever: Alpenglow.

Interestingly, this project got started when researchers wrote a paper exploring some problems with Solana consensus, and Anza hired them to come fix it.

The end result claims to be a 100x reduction in block finality and the end of proof-of-history as we know it. It could be live as soon as December, making Solana run ever faster.

— Jack Kubinec

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It’s been 12 trading days since the first US ETF started offering staking rewards on Solana, and REX-Osprey has just announced that it's adding JitoSOL Liquid Staking to SSK. 

Staking SOL usually means a lot of self-management. You've got to lock it up, manage validators, navigate DeFi dashboards, stress over slashing risk and watch your life spiral into hand-wringing nausea every time the network hiccups (or is that just me?).

Which is fine for a sliver of users. However, most investors use brokerages and IRAs, not Phantom wallets.

Staking has been functionally inaccessible for the kind of capital that flows through traditional markets simply because it's too Gordian for the majority of allocators to try to wade through. 

REX-Osprey's SSK ETF cracked the first half of that problem at the beginning of July — onchain staking rewards in a US-listed ETF. Today's update solves the other half.

By integrating JitoSOL, the ETF now earns staking rewards without locking up capital. Investors can get yield and stay liquid, with no wallets, bridges or blackbox DeFi platforms in sight. Cue the fanfare.

— Jeffrey Albus

In crypto, hype fades but sustainable ecosystems win. Learn how top protocols are building for the long haul.

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