The Third Leap: Why Solana Could Hit New All-Time Highs

**DJ Ha Trang** (0:00)
So, because we're talking about all-time highs, I'm predicting that in this third leap, Solana will have a new all-time high. So, given that the previous all-time high is $290, I think we can target.

**John Gill** (0:16)
Solana has had a tough bear market so far, but is it over for Solana or are they building for a monster bull run in the next cycle? Hello and welcome to The Milk Road Show, the podcast that knows that this summer, Solana Beach has been a lot more fun than Solana, a big block chain, but that could change very soon. I'm your host, John Gill, and today is Monday, August 3rd, and today we are joined by DJ Ha Trang. DJ is the head of research at BirdEye, a major crypto data and analytics platform where she authors data-driven reports on topics like Solana, ecosystem trends, stable coins, RWAs, on-chain markets, a whole lot of other stuff. DJ is going to share a lot of Solana Alpha with us today, so if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe, share this episode with somebody who's gonna enjoy it, and as a reminder, our podcast today is free and that would not be possible without our wonderful sponsors at Securitize, the regulated rails for tokenization, so keep an ear out for more information about them later in the episode. Without further ado, welcome back to The Milk Road Show. DJ, how are you?

**DJ Ha Trang** (1:10)
Good, hi John. Very happy to be back here on MuteRoad to talk a little bit more about Solana and RWAs.

**John Gill** (1:16)
I'm happy to talk to you. I always learn so much about Solana from you, and I thought a good place to start would be to dive in with the recent report you published on Solana's first half of 2026
It's called Primed for the Third Leap. I wonder if we could start with just that title. What were the first two leaps that Solana went through, and what is this third leap that you say is coming?

**DJ Ha Trang** (1:36)
Yeah, for sure. The two first leaps that we talked about was the two moments where Sol hit all-time high. The first one was in November 2021, where Solana found product market feed as the fastest, cheapest chain and that led to Sol climbing to an all-time high of 260
I think if you remember, that was NFT season in the DeFi summer on Ethereum extending to Solana in 2021
But then FTX collapsed, Sol moved back to $10, a lot of people lost hope. But then the ecosystem kept building, and thanks to the meme coin season in 2024, Solana was back to its all-time high, generating $225 at $290. The title of our research was Prime for the Third League, meaning that the ecosystem is preparing for the next comeback, and this time entering from quite a different position as the venue for everything trading on-chain. So it's not just NFT, not just DeFi or just meme coins. It's having a lot more to say and a lot more to look forward to in this next third leap.

**John Gill** (2:54)
Gotcha. Okay. So the third leap is coming. The first two have happened. You say in this report that Solana has been consolidating its position as the go-to venue for everything trading on-chain. And you said that they've got 40... Sorry, you said that Solana has 54% of market share with $425 billion in volume of trading per month. Is that market share for spot crypto? Is it market share for everything?
And walk us through how Solana has captured so much market share here.

**DJ Ha Trang** (3:23)
Yeah, that is on spot trading volume. So spot is leading other types of trading on Solana at this point. And I think if you look at daily ranking of DEX trading volume, Solana has been consistently in the leads. And I think that is...
There are two reasons backing that. So the first one is infrastructure.
Solana has started positioning itself as the fastest and cheapest chain since 2021 And I think they are still holding that to this day. And we wrote about this infrastructure improvement in our Solana 2025 report. And a lot has been still in the works to even further improve the infrastructure of Solana so that the chain is best positioned for everything trading. So the idea is a trader comes on-chain to Solana, he or she has the best user experience, the smoothest trading, the cheapest fee compared to other venues. And one of the recent research that I found very interesting was that Solana has been delivering materially better execution for SOL USDC trade compared to centralized chains. And this Solana being better is showing size that is expanding to other pairs as well. So Solana is not just competing with other layer ones, they're directly competing with centralized chains, where traditionally has been having the best depth and having the best user experience for traders. And I think that is the grand vision of Solana being everything trading on chain, that they're even better than centralized exchanges.