Solana Foundation has emerged as the go-to blockchain for meme coin traders and decentralized exchange (DEX) users — and according to Solana Foundation's CMO Akshay BD, the trend wasn't engineered from the top but built organically from the bottom up.
Speaking with TheStreet Roundtable's Mehab Qureshi, Akshay said the chain's speed and low-cost infrastructure naturally drew in memecoin communities and developers.
"I think that's a bottom-up emergent phenomena. It's not something that was planned or even foreseeable for that matter when the blockchain was conceived," Akshay explained. "What it is is a symptom of the high performance or high speed, low cost execution engine that Solana is."
With fees just fractions of a cent, Solana has enabled users to issue and trade assets at almost zero cost, unlocking a culture of experimentation.
Solana's accessibility unlocks creator economy
Solana is a high-speed, low-cost blockchain designed for scalable decentralized applications and trading. It allows users to send and trade assets for fractions of a cent, making it ideal for memecoins and NFTs. Its low fees and fast transactions have made it a favorite among crypto traders and developers.
"If it's the cost of issuing assets today is near zero… those users will also become producers and they will create these assets for people to trade," Akshay said. "Today it's memecoins, but tomorrow it'll be stocks, bonds, real estate — any asset that has value."
The Solana memecoin market cap stands at $9.19 billion, with $2.09 billion in 24-hour trading volume. Top memecoins on Solana include TRUMP ($2.17B), BONK ($1.27B), and FARTCOIN ($1.08B) by market cap. Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) and dogwifhat (WIF) round out the top five with $698M and $544M, respectively.
He also pointed to regulatory factors that previously limited the types of tokens developers could legally issue.
"It was not possible to launch productive assets and pass on the fruits of those enterprise to the holders because of securities law," Akshay added. But with the U.S. becoming more progressive toward crypto regulation, that may soon change.
DEX culture thrives thanks to Solana's UX edge
Solana's ecosystem is also thriving on the DEX front. Qureshi noted that while Solana is available on major centralized exchanges like Binance and Kraken, the real action appears to be happening on-chain.
Akshay credited the strong DEX culture to user experience."The product experience is sort of indistinguishable from centralized exchanges," he said. "Solana has this fierce product culture of being able to ship high-quality user-friendly products… That user friendliness attracts the average internet user."
He noted that users prefer self-custody due to concerns about hacks and custodial failures. "They can be the protector of their own financial infrastructure and of their own financial assets and have it within their control," he said.
Solana TVL doubled in the past year, $4.16 billion to $7.635 billion, per DeFiLlama.
