Increased speculation on meme coins resulted in higher on-chain activity levels on Solana and $BNB Chain during the week. On-chain activity on Solana increased by 38%, reaching 31.4 million active addresses; on $BNB Chain, on-chain activity increased by 45% in trading volume over the period, according to DefiLlama data. The surge suggests a strong level of interest in trading. However, the unprecedented rise in activity in wallets and transaction volume does not signify sustainable adoption of the network because trading activities with meme coins involve limited, fleeting periods of profitability.
The jump is connected to the trading of coins like $ANSEM on Solana, TCC, and CZ on $BNB Chain. Because of this transaction volume, Solana managed to occupy the first position in the rankings of chains in terms of seven-day chain activity.
Meme coins mania returns
On Solana, roughly 31.4 million active addresses generated 685 million transactions over seven days alongside $13.63 billion in trading volume. These transactions were responsible for earning $4.06 million in fees, which is 70% more than last year, while the weekly protocol revenues were $422,500 or 21% more than last year’s performance. The report put Solana‘s total value locked (TVL) at $24.78 billion, up 3.9% during the week.
Based on the reported figures, Solana averaged approximately 22 transactions per active address during the week, indicating that the majority of the transactions were done by the same clients that made trades again and again. The fees earned on the network amounted to $0.0059 per transaction, evidencing the fact that low costs helped Solana make such a high volume of trades.
$BNB Chain’s activity is somewhat less impressive compared to that of Solana; nevertheless, it can be seen that it is affected by similar factors. The 24-hour trading volume of $BNB Chain has grown from $240 million to $350 million, which translates into a 45% growth rate. Moreover, the network has reported approximately 8.3 million active addresses and 96.7 million transactions, which means that it has grown by 3.5% within a year, with the fees charged by it amounting to $182,000.
These figures translate into about 11.6 transactions per active address and $0.0019 in fees per transaction at $BNB Chain, which means that the trading activities in both networks exist at low fees but with Solana clients having twice as many trading operations as $BNB Chain ones.
Live dashboards by DefiLlama provide more information about the market. SOL traded around $80.58, whereas $BNB traded around $582.26 as the activity became more vigorous. The decentralized exchanges in Solana managed to carry $1.81 billion in volume against $349.52 million on the $BNB Chain.
Why activity can be misleading
Meme coins have continuously produced similar surges in network activity. In March 2024, speculation surrounding tokens, such as Book of Meme, led to the daily on-chain transaction volume for the Solana blockchain to exceed $3.79 billion and transaction fees to hit historical highs, with Jupiter briefly surpassing Uniswap’s daily trading volume.
The recent surge also fits into the wider research that sheds light on the functioning of the meme-coin market. As per Galaxy Research, meme coins contributed to about 30% of the trading volume on Solana decentralized exchanges in late 2025, down from about 60% earlier that year. It was further noted that the average holding period for holders of meme tokens was only about 100 seconds, meaning that a huge share of the profits generated during trading spikes goes to exchanges, launchpads, and other market infrastructure through transaction fees rather than to traders themselves.
Various research works confirm that one can’t simply take the high on-chain activity into account because of the misleading nature of such behavior. One research focused on the Solana meme-coin ecosystem noted that trading platforms, like Pump.fun, were responsible for about 40% to 67% of all decentralized exchange transactions, and less than 2% of the total number of cryptocurrencies launched in Q4 2024 ended up being traded on major decentralized exchanges.
Another cross-chain research covering about 35,000 meme tokens operating on Ethereum, $BNB Smart Chain, Solana, and Base reported that 82.8% of the meme tokens, which brought more than 100% returns, were manipulated through wash trading and liquidity pool-based price inflation, illustrating that the rise in trading activity might be a result of coordinated speculative behavior rather than organic activity.
What to watch
The key issue at hand is whether volumes stay at high numbers after people stop paying attention to $ANSEM, TCC, and CZ.
Lasting positive change in network fundamentals would likely be evidenced by a continuous increase in the network address as well as a continuous increase in total value locked (TVL), protocol revenues, and creation of fees when the trading speculation dies down. On the other hand, if there is a sharp decline in activity following the latest round of meme-coin speculation, then it would follow the pattern that is commonly shown in previous studies and prior Solana market episodes.
