From Struggles to Triumph; Solana Shines as TRUMP Coin Market Cap Soars to Billions

TRUMP continued to soar on Sunday, climbing to unprecedented levels with a market capitalization exceeding $14 billion.

Notably, the meme token, launched by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday, has captured the cryptocurrency world’s attention, surging by an astounding 223% within 24 hours of its debut. At press time, the token was trading at $64.6 after climbing to the 14th spot among the largest cryptocurrencies, surpassing prominent tokens like SHIB and TON.

The TRUMP token launched with an initial supply of 200 million coins, while the total emission is capped at 1 billion. According to the project’s roadmap, tokens will be unlocked incrementally over three years. Notably, 800 million tokens (80% of the total tokens) are reserved for creators and CIC Digital, a company tied to Trump’s NFT ventures, raising concerns about centralization. 

That said, the launch of TRUMP has not only energized its ecosystem but also fueled remarkable growth for Solana (SOL), the blockchain hosting the token.

At press time on Sunday, Solana was trading at an all-time high (ATH) of $285.76, reflecting a 19% surge in the past 24 hours, buoyed by a surge in network activity and trading volumes. On-chain data from analytics platform DefiLlama revealed that Solana’s decentralized exchanges (DEXs) experienced a staggering $21 billion in daily trading volume for two consecutive days, solidifying the network’s dominance in the DEX segment with 52% market share.

Beyond the hype surrounding TRUMP, Solana’s surge can be attributed to investors rotating funds back into SOL after cashing out of meme coins. On-chain data from Solana Floor shows that the TRUMP team wallet, which deploys liquidity on Meteora’s pools, has been using fees collected to purchase SOL, acquiring over $7 million worth since launch.

Lookonchain also reported several such instances with one whale who bought 1M TRUMP for 11.5M USDC, selling the meme tokens for 312,571 SOL, netting an unrealized profit of $9.8M.

That said, Solana’s seamless handling of a recent surge in transaction volumes has earned widespread praise, highlighting its significant progress since facing network outages in 2023 and early 2024.

“Make no mistake, the Solana of the pre-era (March 2024) could not have handled this launch gracefully. The degree to which Solana knocked it out of the park on a technical level last night is astonishing. So much progress in just 9 months, and we are just getting started.” Max Resnick, lead economist at Solana-focused firm Anza, noted.

Arthur Cheong, founder and CEO of Defiance Capital, also lauded Solana’s resilience, saying, “Solana really passed this $TRUMP TGE network resiliency test with an A+ score. The chain would have been unusable a year ago with such levels of traffic and transactions.”