Solana Hits its First $1 Billion Milestone in Total Value Locked (TVL)

While DeFi is enjoying a re-pricing following Ether’s new highs, the total value locked in the entire ecosystem has gone past $100 billion and aiming for a $150 billion mark now. Ethereum no doubt remains the leading layer 1 blockchain with almost $90 billion TVL followed by Binance Smart Chain’s (BSC) $56 billion. Coming at the third spot is Solana which has now surpassed $1 billion. The TVL on Solana (SOL) was highest last week at $1.33 billion, up from just under $150 million two and a half months back, as per Solana Project. This rapid growth of the Solana ecosystem is thanks to its fast and scalable decentralized applications. This year's 2,281% uptrend in SOL prices to about $46.90 so far is evidence of the growing traction this public blockchain is seeing. Solana caught the public eye after Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX chose to build the decentralized derivatives platform Serum (SRM) last summer. It has been defined as a blockchain that can “process 10,000 times as much as Ethereum” and is “1,000,000 times cheaper.” This is possible due to the adding of Proof-of-History to an underlying Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism. Proof-of-History enables validators to compute the network state themselves, thus saving on cross-validator communication. Fast transactions at relatively low cost are pushing the users from the second-largest network to Solana, just like it has been happening with BSC. This has helped USDC grow on the blockchain with more than $500 million in circulation today, second only to Ethereum USDC, stated Circle on Tuesday. USDC was first integrated with Solana in late October. Despite its mainnet launching just a year ago, “network fundamentals made it a natural choice for fast, secure, and scalable USDC. Solana is a public blockchain that delivers impressive scalability while maintaining a high degree of decentralization and security,” said the Circle team. The biggest project on Solana currently is Raydium (RAY) which alone accounts for about $900 million of all the TVL on the Solana project, representing a whopping 89% share. Together with Serum DEX, which comes in second place with just over $400 million in TVL, they both account for nearly all the TVL.  Another Solana-based new project making the rounds on Crypto Twitter (CT) is Step Finance which recently launched its STEP token. The protocol amassed $100 million in liquidity in just two days.  The data aggregator that provides analytical dashboards for yield farmers aims to be the go-to DeFi aggregator for all tokens launched in the Solana ecosystem.