SOL Climbs 34% YTD Despite Failing to Reclaim $260 Support

Solana's native token SOL rose 7% on Jan. 22, despite failing to reclaim the $260 support level. More importantly, SOL has climbed 34% year-to-date in 2025

Solana’s native token (SOL) price experienced a 7% increase on Jan. 22, despite failing to reclaim the $260 support level. However, SOL remained the best performer among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

The broader altcoin market also witnessed gains, with the Altcoin Index (ALT) rising 1.02% over the past 24 hours and 10% year-to-date in 2025. This upswing was largely fueled by memecoin trading hype, especially following the launch of the Official Trump (TRUMP) token on Jan. 18.

Solana network fees dropped 67% to $11.7 million on Jan. 21, compared to Jan. 19. This decline aligns with reduced trading activity on Raydium, Pump.fun, and Orca, although overall levels remained higher than the previous week. At the same time, fees stayed unchanged on other decentralized applications (DApps), such as Jito, Meteora, Photon, and Moonshot.money.

While memecoins certainly played a role in driving Solana network activity, it's important to note that this demand may not be sustainable in the long term and could present a different challenge for the Solana ecosystem.

A comparable pattern emerged in daily active addresses, which peaked at 16.5 million on Jan. 20 before slipping to 13 million, according to Glassnode data. However, to evaluate Solana's network activity fully, a comparison with competitor data is essential.

Investors should take note that memecoins are not Solana’s sole use case, yet the recent demand driving network activity appears unsustainable.

Solana market share in decentralized exchanges remained strong

Despite the overall downturn in onchain activity, Solana's market share in decentralized exchanges (DEX) remained strong, preserving its top position over the past seven days.

On Jan. 21, Solana recorded $11.9 billion in DEX volume, while BNB Chain and Ethereum combined for $7.4 billion. Solana's dominance has stayed above 45% since Jan. 16, higher than the previous week's average of 34%.

Essentially, the slowdown in Solana's onchain activity could be a reflection of traders shifting their focus to the stock market, especially amid optimism over Trump's presidency.

Traders might have pivoted to the stock market, driven by optimism about lower corporate taxes, import tariffs, and a more business-friendly environment following Donald Trump’s recent election victory.

The S&P 500 index advanced 0.8% to an intraday record of 6,100 on Jan. 22, boosted in part by Netflix, which jumped 11% after surpassing 300 million paid subscriptions.

Additionally, Oracle shares rose 7%, while Nvidia climbed 4% on news of a joint venture with OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, involving at least $500 billion in planned investments. Keith Lerner, Truist's co-chief investment officer, reportedly told CNBC:

The perpetual contract (inverse swap) funding rate usually climbs above 1.9% per month when bullish sentiment prevails, indicating that long (buy) positions are paying to maintain leverage.

Over the past two days, the demand for SOL leverage has remained balanced between bulls and bears, with the indicator currently at 0.5% per month. Notably, on Jan. 20, traders briefly showed increased demand for short (sell) leverage.

Solana price faces hurdles above $280, SOL price risks slipping to $220 if support fails

Finally, a glance at SOL futures premiums is crucial to assessing traders' sentiment in the derivative markets. These premiums are annualized and calculated by comparing futures prices with spot prices at regular intervals.

Unless a new catalyst emerges for SOL — such as US approval of a spot Solana exchange-traded fund (ETF) — the likelihood of revisiting the $295 all-time high soon appears limited.