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 its builders and developers race to make the layer-1 network home to the “world’s most liquid markets.”

Alpenglow is expected to be implemented on testnet by December, with a mainnet rollout in Q1 2026.

Solana treasuries emerge

Despite growing to become the sixth-largest crypto asset by market cap, Solana may still feel like a lesser sibling to traditional investors that have had much more brand exposure to majors like Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

But the layer-1 network’s SOL token made a major debut in traditional equities markets this year as a wave of publicly traded digital asset treasuries (DATs) began to accumulate the token for their balance sheets. Such firms followed in the footsteps of Bitcoin behemoth Strategy, which pioneered the crypto treasury wave.

In early April, real-estate technology firm Janover—now known as DeFi Development Corp.—implemented a strategy to build its treasury with a focus on Solana. Upexi, a consumer products firm, created a similar strategy in the same month.

Throughout the year, the two collectively raised hundreds of millions and accumulated more than 4 million SOL in total—about 2 million SOL each, now valued around $284 million for each respective treasury.

For a time, that was good enough to place them at the top of the list for publicly traded Solana treasury firms—until September, when medical design firm Forward Industries acquired nearly 7 million SOL using nearly all the proceeds from a $1.65 billion PIPE. 

But while initial excitement surrounded their creation, leading to share price spikes, the DAT trade began to unwind as the year went on and crypto asset prices fell. Once trading as high as $22.70, UPXI shares had fallen to $2.04 by early December—a drop of 91%. Shares in DFDV fell around the same, with Forward Industries (FWDI) dropping around 84% from its peak. 

Will they ever recover? 

There’s growing doubt. The interim CEO of Solana treasury firm SOL Strategies Michael Hubbard, which calls itself a DAT++ because of its focus on its core Solana infrastructure business, told Decrypt in November that he believes there’s no sustainable model for DATs, adding that the approval of staking ETFs will “eat their lunch.” 

Wall Street joins the party

One of the last remaining traditional markets dominoes fell for Solana with the approval of spot and staking ETFs, allowing a broader spectrum of investors to gain access to the token. 

Long anticipated, the Solana funds were granted a “near lock” label earlier this year from ETF analysts but the government shutdown delayed their arrival until the final week of October. 

Nevertheless, the launch of Bitwise’s BSOL ETF attracted more than $69 million in inflows upon its debut. Other ETFs like TSOL from 21Shares, Grayscale’s GSOL, FSOL from Fidelity, and VSOL from VanEck also earned approval. Shortly thereafter, Solana even got its own 2x levered ETF, allowing riskier investors to seek double the return of the asset.

Overall, ETF launches were greeted well by investors, leading to a 21-day streak of net inflows after first approval. As of December 15, SOL ETFs have generated more than $600 million in net inflows according to data from SoSoValue. 

And while some predicted that their launch, and the respective buy pressure of digital asset treasuries (DAT), would lead to an “epic end of year” run for the asset, it has yet to come.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.