Solana’s native token, SOL, recently experienced an 11% correction after being rejected near the $93 resistance level last Wednesday. Over the past week, SOL has underperformed the broader cryptocurrency market, repeatedly testing the critical $80 support zone. This price action coincides with a notable decline in on-chain activity, particularly in decentralized exchange (DEX) volumes, prompting some traders to anticipate a potential retest of the $75 level should support fail.
Ethereum Layer-2s Chip Away at Solana’s DEX Leadership
Data from DefiLlama reveals that Solana’s DEX volumes fell to $55.5 billion in March, the lowest figure since September 2024. While Solana still leads in absolute DEX volume, its dominance is facing structured competition. A key factor is the rapid growth of Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem. When aggregating volumes from networks like Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Optimism, Ethereum’s combined DEX market share rose to 42% in March, up from 33% in January. This shift is largely driven by Ethereum’s strategic adoption of data blobs—a scaling solution that significantly reduces transaction costs for layer-2 rollups, making them increasingly attractive for high-frequency trading activity.
This competitive pressure aligns with a broader decline in Solana network fees, which dropped to $18.5 million in March—a 42% decrease from January’s $30 million peak. Much of this reduction stems directly from lower DEX trading volumes, as DEX activity remains a
