The decentralized exchange (DEX) Raydium has just surpassed its rival Uniswap in terms of volumes recorded during the month of January.
The well-known trading platform of the Solana ecosystem is growing rapidly in the wake of the recent hype for the memecoin sector, quickly increasing volumes and TVL
Solana as a whole is also marking more appealing on-chain metrics compared to Ethereum, to the point of putting the leadership of the EVM world at risk.
Let’s see all the details below.
Summary
Raydium beats Uniswap and records higher DEX volumes in January
Raydium, a well-known decentralized exchange based on Solana, has just recorded a market share of 27% of all DEX volumes related to the month of January.
These numbers, with a strong growth from the 18.8% share marked in December, are incredibly higher compared to those of the rival crypto platform Uniswap.
This last one, leader in the DEX sector since 2019, was responsible for only 22% of the sector’s volumes in January, leaving the primacy to Raydium.
Uniswap boasted a market share of 34.5% in December but was outpaced by the growing trading activity observed on the Solana blockchain, where memecoins took the bull by the horns.
At the same time, Uniswap has lost trust from the Ethereum community, with several users expressing their opposition to the recent moves made by the Ethereum Foundation. Among these, we can mention the continuous sales of ETH to finance their operations and the lack of focus on current trends like AI and memes.
Raydium is grateful for these adversities, and achieves monthly DEX volumes greater than the competitor exchange for the first time since its inception.
In the meantime, PancakeSwap of the BNB chain closes the podium with a market share of 17%, rapidly expanding compared to the numbers at the end of 2024.
Orca and Meteora, also belonging to the Solana ecosystem, are ranked fourth and fifth in the ranking, respectively.
Raydium grows thanks to memecoin and leads the record of DEX volumes on the Solana blockchain
As mentioned, the recent success of Raydium in the DEX sector has been amplified by the strong memecoin narrative that exploded in January.
The trading platform was indeed helped by the extensive negotiations that took place for the official memecoin of the USA president Donald Trump, which was launched on the Solana network.
In particular, the token TRUMP exploded in the first days of trading, attracting hundreds of thousands of traders and billions of dollars in trades.
In a scenario like this, Raydium has seen its DEX market share increase, leading in parallel to a growth in TVL.
Consider that from the beginning of the year until January 26, Raydium saw a 50% increase in the share of capital locked within it, before slightly retracing in conjunction with the crypto market crash.
As of today, the exchange boasts a TVL of 2.2 billion dollars, a value slightly higher than the top of 2021. In comparison, Uniswap is still in a drawdown of 50% compared to its ATH.
The greater appeal of Raydium compared to Uniswap has also impacted the DEX volume metrics for blockchain.
In January, in fact, Solana processed 3 times the volumes of Ethereum, continuing the bull trend initiated in the month of October 2024.
Until that moment, in fact, Ethereum had always recorded higher volumes than any other chain, leaving no room for potential competition.
Now it seems that Solana reigns supreme in the world of DEX: during the single week of the TRUMP launch, the chain processed 5 times more transactions than those executed by users on Ethereum.
Solana better than Ethereum also in terms of dapps revenue
Another factor that can help us understand the moment of strong expansion of Solana in the DEX sector is represented by the on-chain revenue metric.
While Raydium has seen its volumes increase in recent months, its revenue along with those of other similar decentralized exchanges have skyrocketed.
In January, the dApp based on Solana collected about 500 million dollars in fees, almost 5 times compared to what was done by the dApp on Ethereum.
The months of October, November, and December 2024 also favored the Solana ecosystem, but never gave a gap similar to the current one.
We will see if in the coming months the Ethereum Foundation will take any initiative to curb the Solana threat, aiming to increase the participation on its own network.
In the middle of these themes is also the issue of the trend of memecoin, which could lose appeal in the future, leaving more room for the trading of other projects on Ethereum.
The current scenario seems to favor the growth and prosperity of the Solana ecosystem, where more speculations and more income for the projects seem to circulate.
At the same time, the ratio between the TVL of Solana and that of Ethereum seems to be growing more and more, suggesting a more appealing momentum for the first chain.
Within the span of a year, from February 2024 to today, the ratio has increased from a meager 5% to the current 17.5%, for a growth in TVL greater than over 3 times that of Ethereum.
It will be interesting to see if at the end of 2025 there will be a trend reversal, or if the ratio will continue to increase up to 20% and beyond.
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