What is Solana?

• Solana is a blockchain that aims to acheive high transactions speeds and low gas fees while still maintaining a high degree of decentralization.
• Solana utilizes a unique consensus mechanism called proof of history, which allows transactions to be recorded without all of the nodes reaching consensus. This allows for far faster transaction speeds than competitors such as Ethereum.

Questions of Interest

• How many unique contracts are being used daily?
• What type of programs are the most popular, and what programs seem to be gaining in popularity?
• Does it appear that development is still ongoing in the bear market?

Methodology

• All contract types will be included in the daily number of unique contracts and total unique contracts, however the top contract analysis will only include Dapps, DeFi contracts, and DEXs.
• All data will be from January 2022 onward.

The daily number of unique programs used on Solana has increased significantly over the past several months, from around 400 daily at the beginning of January to over 1000 in June and July.

The number of daily unique users on Solana spiked in April of 2022, shooting up from under 300,000 daily unique users to a peak of over 2.5 million on April 30th. After this peak the number dramatically dropped to pre-April levels.

Just under 3000 total unique contracts have been used on Solana since April of 2022.

By far the most popular Dapp/DeFi/DEX contract on Solana has been Serum protocol. Serum is a base protocol layer that allows users to create their own DEX interface on top of it. Serum is still currently the top protocol by the number of interactions, however, its popularity has decreased significantly over the past several months.