The Year in Solana 2025: Trump and Wall Street Take Notice

In brief Solana had an up and down year, highlighted by early all-time highs followed by relative underperformance. Highlights include the launch of President Trump's meme coin, formation of Solana digital asset treasuries, and the rollout of SOL ETFs. The network is expected to get faster and cheaper with the implementation of Alpenglow. Solana’s native token surged to a new all-time high shortly after the year began, but the 2025 story of the speedy layer-1 network was not all up and to the right: SOL has finished the year in a serious slump, down substantially since this time last year. Nevertheless, the network made big headlines, notched major technical improvements, launched another mobile phone, and found a way to better intertwine with traditional financial markets. Here’s a look back at how 2025 shaped up for Solana. Trump launches a meme coin The election of President Donald Trump sent a shockwave of positivity into the crypto markets in November 2024. And while speculators may have forecasted eased regulations and favorable market conditions, they could not have foreseen that the president would eventually launch his own meme coin- TRUMP -on the Solana blockchain. But that’s exactly what happened on the evening of January 17, just days before the inauguration of Trump. That night, Solana meme coin traders were greeted with the launch and social media promotion of the official TRUMP token. After the initial shock and skepticism surrounding the validity of the token, it quickly jumped to a multi-billion-dollar fully diluted valuation amid billions in trading volume. The frenzy of the moment also impacted SOL, which matched TRUMP in creating its latest all-time high on January 19, when the network’s native token changed hands for $293.31. But the momentum soon after faded, sending TRUMP and SOL both down from their peaks-gradually at first, and more swiftly on the back of the Trump trade wars and tariff announcements. On April 6, Solana had fallen nearly 64% from its top to change hands at $105.77, according to CoinGecko, the token’s low mark for the year. SOL recently traded at $127.70 as of December 15, more than 56% off its all-time high mark. TRUMP holders have fared far worse with the President’s meme coin down nearly 93% from its peak, changing hands at $5.33 as of December 15. Alpenglow incoming While the SOL token price has underperformed since its January burst, the underlying Solana network has been steadily improving throughout the year. In May, developers introduced Alpenglow-a new consensus protocol that could reshape the performance of the network, improving transaction finality by at least 5x in the process. In September, Solana validators officially voted to implement the network upgrade, with 98% of votes in favor. After its passing, Anza lead economist and co-author of the Alpenglow white paper, Max Resnick, told Decrypt , “Apps are going to feel a lot snappier and exchanges will be able to safely credit deposits much faster.” The upgrade is just one of a handful of key updates planned as...

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