Solana sees surge in new users amid higher fees on Ethereum, Bitcoin

Higher fees on Ethereum and Bitcoin may be good news for Solana, where the average number of new daily addresses has surged to the highest level in almost a year.

The Layer 1 network saw the seven-day moving average of new addresses hit 304,640 on Monday, the highest number since June 2022, according to data from The Block.

More new addresses have already been added in the first half of May than protocol saw in the entire month of April, the data shows. The surge came as transaction fees on both the Ethereum and Bitcoin networks saw 3-month highs last week.

The number of active addresses that have sent or received funds on the Bitcoin network, meanwhile, has fallen to the lowest level since July 2021.

Solana use rose amid Ethereum finality issues

"The increase seemed to start earlier in May when fees started rising on Ethereum and had people looking for other places to transact, but that second rally could also be tied to the Ethereum finality issues," The Block research analyst Rebecca Stevens said, noting that a similar rise in new addresses was occurring across Ethereum-scaling platforms such as Polygon.

"Solana has faced a lot of pushback over its outages, so the recent Ethereum network troubles could be putting things in perspective," she added, referring to two incidents last week that saw Ethereum's beacon chain briefly stop finalizing blocks.

Solana's native SOL token, which saw dramatic declines last year amid the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange, has staged a recovery since, rising 109% year-to-date. While it fell 0.9% on Tuesday to $20.78, it's up 0.6% this week, according to data from TradingView.