Author: Frank, PANews
A weekly outflow of $1 billion in pledged funds and a nearly 60% plunge in daily active users - the Solana ecosystem is facing its most severe test in nearly half a year. With platforms like Pump.fun pouring out over $600 million in chips and large-scale validators shaken in their pledge confidence due to the SIMD proposal, coupled with the vacuum left by the waning MEME craze, the SOL token has plummeted 57% in 40 days, leading the decline of mainstream tokens.
As on-chain data fluctuations and market sell-offs form a death cross, how will this public chain giant, once seen as the "Ethereum killer", break through the double whammy of ecosystem restructuring and capital flight?
Accelerated Pledge Withdrawal: $1 Billion in Funds Fled in a Single Week
In the past week, the Solana chain's pledge volume has decreased by 5.97 million tokens, and in the past month it has decreased by 3.61 million. It can be seen that in the past week, many large pledge holders have begun to withdraw SOL funds to avoid the risk of decline. The weekly decline was about 1.5%, with a reduction in pledge funds of about $1 billion.
Looking at the changes in the Solana network, on February 23, the Solana network experienced a violent network change, with the number of daily active users and new wallet additions both dropping by about 90% that day, and then recovering to normal levels. This violent fluctuation was most likely caused by some trading bots on the chain crashing or shutting down that day, which also exposed the problem of the high proportion of bots on the Solana network from this perspective.
Data as of February 28 shows that the current level of active users has also dropped significantly from the peak in October last year. On October 22, the daily active address reached a high of 8.78 million, and on February 27 the data dropped to 3.71 million, a decrease of about 58%.
5 Whales Concentrated Selling: $317 Million in Chips Impacting the Market
Recently, multiple large SOL holders have chosen to sell tokens or unplug pledges, and PANews has made an incomplete statistical analysis based on information exposed on social media. There are 5 whales that have sold about 2.09 million SOL in a short period of time, worth about $317 million, at an average selling price of about $151.
Among them, the address AMekyY73RJBd4urgZ2HvWV8yFzvk4nRsGmahuJcWiQri unpledged 236,000 tokens, and as of now has only sold 60,000, and it is unknown whether the remaining tokens will continue to be sold in the near future.
In addition, Pump.fun is also a major seller on the chain, as of February 28, Pump.fun has sold a total of about 3.02 million SOL tokens, cashing out a total of about $610 million. In the past month, Pump.fun has sold 440,000 SOL, worth about $78.39 million. This has further exacerbated the already panicked market.
However, with the decline in MEME hype, Pump's various data has also been declining continuously, on February 23, Pump.fun's active users dropped to a low of 41,000, and the next day recovered to around 180,000. The overall data has dropped by more than 50% in the past month.
The crypto brokerage FalconX is also an important channel for large holders to flee, according to PANews statistics, in February, the SOL tokens transferred from FalconX to Binance reached 386,700, worth about $66 million. However, further research found that large holders seemed to have fled earlier in January, with 1.37 million SOL tokens transferred from FalconX to Binance in January, worth $315 million, at an average transfer price of about $229, much higher than other months.
Of course, there are people leaving the market, but there are also people rushing in. On February 27 and 28, the address EhuKBFXyUYgwc4nUMJMQHjY4A7w5nTTrMtY6z4TtZSFK bought 83,000 SOL tokens, spending a total of $10.88 million, at an average entry price of about $134.
SIMD Proposal Shock: Pledge Earnings Shrinking Triggers Validator Panic
However, overall, the inflowing capital is still in the minority, and the selling large holders account for the majority. In addition to the changes in the overall macroeconomic environment causing turmoil in the financial markets, the uncertainties within the Solana ecosystem are also a major reason. The recently launched SIMD-0228 proposal proposes to modify the SOL token issuance curve and reduce the inflation rate, with the premise of reducing the pledge earnings. Therefore, for many large validator node holders, this has also become an important factor of short-term uncertainty.
Facing both internal and external troubles, Solana's ecosystem data and token market prices are under double pressure. As of the afternoon of February 28, the SOL price has fallen 57% in the past 40 days, making it the largest decline among mainstream tokens recently.
Currently, with no new narratives emerging to lead the industry and the MEME track gradually fading, how Solana can maintain its on-chain heat may become the biggest challenge.
