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Solana hit an all-time high after the $TRUMP coin launched on the token's native blockchain.
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Some expect memecoins to proliferate under looser regulation, benefiting the network.
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Solana could also see fresh gains from the approval of an ETF down the road.
When Donald Trump ignited a meme coin bonanza days before his inauguration, he also lit a fire under Solana.
The weekend before his return to the White House, the president and his wife each announced their own meme coins, issued on the Solana blockchain. Each token's market cap expanded by billions within days, but the high didn't last long: both $TRUMP and $MELANIA plunged dramatically around the time of the inauguration.
Regardless, the brief rally did much to boost the profile of the Solana blockchain and its native token.
As the memes rallied, so did the $SOL token. It's price hit an all-time high of $294 on Sunday and witnessed over $50 billion in trading volume that weekend, according to Bernstein. Since the token is used to pay fees related to other coins issued on the Solana blockchain, demand for $SOL surged aggressively. In fact, it was so high that it sparked outages at one of the top crypto exchanges, Coinbase.
"It's clear we need to step up our game on Solana, scale our infrastructure, and provide native support for common use cases like DEX/memecoin trading," Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote on X.
And more use cases like this could be coming, crypto analysts said.
With pro-crypto regulation expected under President Trump, meme coins could proliferate in a new risk-on environment. Consider the wave of unofficial tokens that burst onto the market following the $TRUMP coin's success, and other meme cryptos, such as "fartcoin," have been surging recently.
"Memecoins are nowhere near topping out — in fact, quite the opposite after the POTUS launched his own memecoin. This act now gives agency to anyone or any brand to follow suit," Joe McCann, founder and CEO of digital assets investment first Asymmetric, told Business Insider.
As more cryptos are launched on Solana, the native token will keep rallying for two reasons, he said: not only is $SOL necessary to transact memecoins on the network, but memecoin liquidity pools are always paired to $SOL.
Meanwhile, Solana has become a retail go-to compared to major competitors such as Ethereum. The reason is simple: the Solana blockchain is fast and cheap.
"It enables super-fast transactions at a fraction of a penny per transaction," McCann said. "Memecoins are 'nano-cap' coins that eventually achieve large market capitalizations depending on interest and activity. Since no other chain provides users with what they actually want — a fast and cheap user experience — Solana is the obvious home for memecoins."