After several years of strong gains – briefly disrupted by the 2022 crypto market crash – Solana-based tokens are closing out one of their most difficult periods to date. As broader markets entered a sustained downturn in 2025, investors retreated from higher-risk assets, prompting widespread sell-offs across major cryptocurrencies, including SOL. The result was heavy losses for projects built on Solana, dragging the ecosystem’s total valuation well below last year’s levels.
According to figures published by TechGaged, tokens operating on the Solana blockchain lost more than $157 billion in value during 2025, representing the largest dollar-value decline in the network’s history.
2025 downturn exceeds 2022 losses by $40bn
Solana and its associated tokens had enjoyed a prolonged period of expansion. The world’s seventh-largest cryptocurrency ended 2024 with a 105% year-on-year gain, ranking among the strongest performers in the top 20. This momentum was mirrored in network usage, with active addresses increasing almost sixfold to a record 176 million in November.
Growth was fuelled by Solana’s fast transaction speeds, low fees and developer-friendly design, supporting activity across NFTs, decentralised finance, gaming and a surge of new token launches during the 2024-2025 meme coin boom. As adoption accelerated, the combined market capitalisation of Solana-based tokens rose sharply.
Despite expectations of continued success, sentiment shifted abruptly in mid-March 2025, triggering a steep and prolonged decline. Data from CoinMarketCap illustrates the severity of the reversal.
Since market cap tracking began, Solana tokens had recorded gains in most years, with 2022 previously the sole exception. In 2021, their combined valuation surged by 1,730%, adding more than $170 billion. Although values fell 59% in 2022, they rebounded strongly in 2023, rising 112% to around $160 billion, followed by a further 105% increase to nearly $330 billion by the end of 2024. By late January, market capitalisation peaked at an all-time high of $890 billion.
That growth quickly unravelled. By the end of Q1 2025, the market cap had collapsed to $146 billion, a sixfold decline in just two months. While the wider crypto market stabilised later in the year, Solana tokens remained stuck near $200 billion before sliding again in Q4 to roughly $172 billion. The result was an annual loss of $157.2 billion – the largest dollar-value drop ever recorded for the ecosystem.
Although the 2022 downturn was steeper in percentage terms, with a 59% decline compared with 49% in 2025, the absolute value lost was around $40 billion lower, at approximately $111 billion.
“The scale of value destruction across the Solana ecosystem in 2025 is unprecedented, not because of a single failure, but due to a rapid reversal in speculative demand after years of aggressive growth,” said Jastra Kranjec, senior research analyst at Techgaged. “What makes this downturn especially striking is that it followed a period of explosive expansion driven by meme coins, NFTs, and new token launches. When market sentiment shifted, liquidity dried up almost overnight, leaving even fundamentally solid projects exposed. While Solana’s underlying technology remains strong, 2025 serves as a clear reminder of how quickly valuations in high-growth crypto ecosystems can unwind.”
Just two leading Solana tokens post annual gains
Performance across individual tokens was equally stark. CoinMarketCap data shows that only two of the top 20 Solana tokens by market capitalisation are ending 2025 with positive returns.
Pippin, launched in May, led the field with gains of 5,181% at the time of writing, followed by Official Trump, up 307% since its January launch. All other major Solana tokens finished the year in negative territory, with losses ranging from 36% to 83%.
