Solana marks 5 year anniversary as network activity dips, Firedancer launch inches closer

Solana marked its 5-year anniversary on Sunday, a significant milestone in the history of the network, currently the world's sixth-biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 

"Happy solana 0 block day to all those who celebrate," wrote Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko on X. The anniversary was also noted by several significant projects which originated on the network, such as Phantom Wallet and memecoin launchpad Pump.fun. 

The network has seen declines in activity over recent months, however. The number of active addresses on the network has declined each month since its peak in November, and March is currently on track to see fewer active addresses than February. 

The decline in activity is likely linked to the reduced popularity of memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, which became the fastest-growing startup in crypto history following its launch in May 2024, taking only 217 days to reach $100 million in cumulative revenue.

The popularity of Pump.fun has waned recently, following a number of high-profile memecoin scandals, including one which ensnared the President of Argentina and has lead to calls for his impeachment. On Saturday, just 0.66% of tokens graduated to Raydium from the launchpad, the lowest such value since shortly after the platform's launch. (Token graduation indicates significant buy-in from memecoin traders.) 

Still, the price of SOL has staged a significant comeback from its value under $10 in the wake of the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX in November 2022, which was a significant backer of the network. Solana co-founder Raj Gokal referred to the FTX crisis as a "crucible moment" for the nascent blockchain network at the time. SOL recaptured its 2022 peak prices before declining to its current value of about $127. 

Firedancer launch inches closer

The next significant milestone for the blockchain will likely be the launch of Jump Crypto's Firedancer Solana client, which provides an alternate high-performance client for the network, increasing its transaction processing capabilities and resilience to threats and outages. A testnet version of the client and a prototype mainnet version named Frankendancer both launched in September of last year. 

Though its launch was originally planned for the second quarter of 2024, Firedancer is widely expected to launch in full this year. Helius co-founder Mert Memtaz, a significant figure in the Solana community, predicted in December that Firedancer will go live "end of Q2." The upgrade is expected to help Solana scale towards its goal of 1 million transactions per second (TPS). 

Solana may also be approved for inclusion in ETFs in 2024; several asset managers have filed proposals for funds that would include the token, according to The Block's ETF tracking data. Solana, alongside Litecoin, Dogecoin, and XRP, has been cited as having a high likelihood for ETF approval by analysts.