During the week of July 20-26, memecoin activity on Solana reached levels not seen since August of last year. Data from Blockworks shows that memecoins accounted for 29% of the network's spot decentralized exchange volume, a notable jump from just a few weeks prior when the figure ranged from 10% to 15%.
Source: Blockworks
The rest of the chart refutes the simplified conclusion that Solana is a meme-dominated network. SOL-stablecoin pairs accounted for 37% of trading volume for the same week, with stablecoin-to-stablecoin swaps making up another 22%. Foreign tokens accounted for 5%, while project tokens and tokenized assets each accounted for 3%. Memes ranked second, not first.
$ANSEM Brought Idle Traders Back to Work
The revival of memecoins in the network can essentially be traced back to a single token. $ANSEM, or "The Black Bull," was launched on Pump.fun in late June. It has no product, team, or roadmap. Its advantage, however, is its connection to Ansem, one of the most active traders on Solana, after an anonymous developer sent a large portion of the token supply to his wallet, and he decided to use it rather than ignore it. He then promised to redistribute his Pump.fun creator fees to holders through weekly giveaways. It was this promise, not any protocol mechanism, that traders were buying.
$ANSEM saw an explosive surge of roughly 18,000% in just three days. The growth didn't stop there, and its market capitalization peaked around $449 million on July 7th. This alone was able to breathe new life into Solana. Trading volumes on Pump.fun gradually began to rise, and according to DefiLlama, about $614 million of Solana's roughly $1.65 billion daily DEX trading volume is now traded on that platform.
Notably, this is happening at a time when sentiment in the crypto sector is still in the fear zone, at a level of 29.
Stablecoin Volume Exceeded $15 Billion and Remained at That Level Throughout the Downturn
The memecoin revival does not mean the network has regained its 'meme-chain' status. That definition stopped fitting Solana some time ago, and the volume structure is just the tip of the iceberg of the reasons why.
In July, stablecoin supply volume exceeded $15 billion. Stablecoins other than USDC and USDT account for about $4.81 billion of that. The key is not the peak amount, but its resilience. This liquidity did not disappear during the 2026 downturn, when speculative capital typically flees first.
Two companies have leveraged this chain. Western Union deployed USDPT on Solana as a settlement layer, and B2C2 named this chain its primary settlement network for stablecoins. B2C2 is an institutional market maker, so this decision is operational and concerns where trade settlements actually occur. It is not a partnership announcement.
In Terms of Real-World Asset Associations, Solana Has Quietly Taken a Leading Role
Solana hosts 2,582 tokenized real-world assets, more than any other network by number of assets, according to data from rwa.xyz. The total value of distributed assets in the network has exceeded $3.5 billion. Only Robinhood Chain has more asset holders, with Robinhood's holder base being formed by a single broker bringing its users onto the chain, while Solana's is formed by a wider range of issuers.
Stablecoins and RWAs are the unglamorous half of the network. However, it is this half that grew while prices fell.
Memecoin volumes are cyclical by nature. Over twelve months, they dropped from 29% to single digits and returned to their former level, and this will repeat the next time a ticker goes up 300% in a week. Stablecoin supply and risk-weighted asset (RWA) counts have moved in one direction over the same period, including the parts of it that no one enjoyed.
