DJ Ha Trang, head of research at Birdeye, joins Remy Blaire to discuss Solana’s accelerating DeFi growth, record decentralized exchange activity, and why stablecoins and token trading are positioning the network as a hub for on-chain markets.
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Solana DeFi Growth Accelerates as Stablecoins and Token Trading Surge
Remy: DeFi is picking up and becoming a key part of mainstream finance. And in 2025, Solana had a key year as the DeFi ecosystem integrated with blockchain. As a quick recap, Solana did not have any outages last year and it led all major chains in average month over month, quarter over quarter and year over year in stablecoin ecosystem growth. It also continued to lead as the top blockchain in new trading tokens each month. Well, joining me to weigh in is DJ Ha Trang, who is the head of research for Birdeye. Well, DJ, thank you so much for joining me. It might not matter what's going on with price action because Wall Street is coming on chain regardless. And Solana showed this last year. But tell us about the growth through things like decentralized exchange activity.
DJ: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. I think Solana has a wonderful 2025 with a lot of growth in different verticals in fundamentals. So Dex volume surpassed $3 trillion and Solana became the number one chains in terms of Dex volume. Solana recorded zero outages. As you mentioned. And also Solana has become the fastest growing stablecoin ecosystem, with average growth rate year over year more than 200%. The peak is more than 400%. And also, Solana has become a top venue for foreign asset trading such as Bitcoin, ETH, BNB, Hive, Monas, etc. and gradually Solana has developed its infrastructure so that it has become a trading venue for all types of asset and gradually realizing its visions of a go to venue for internet capital markets.
Remy:Yeah. And building on what you just said, what were Solanas numbers on stablecoin. And also tell us how did Circle's Stablecoin play a role?
DJ: Yeah. So, Circle's USDC is the number one stablecoin on Solana and I think the most interesting findings that we have from this report is that USDC usage was highest on Solana compared to other ecosystems such as Ethereum, BNB, Base, etc.. The average monthly usage on Solana for USDC was close to 1,000%, meaning that each USDC token was used ten times, almost ten times on a monthly basis on Solana. So this has shown that trading on Solana is very much dynamic compared to other ecosystem. And it shows that Solana has a very strong foundation in stablecoin supply, stablecoin trading. And this has, I think, attracted a lot of institutional participation in Solana and has also set up Solana as a go to trading venue for a lot of other tokens as well.
Remy:Yeah. And speaking of which, tell us about the increase in new tokens that were launched on Solana, and also how it's emerged as a top venue for layer one native assets.
DJ: Yeah. So Solana has ranked number one in new trading tokens for 21 consecutive months, with more than 40 million tokens created from the beginning, till now. Of course, this has comprised a lot of meme coins, as Solana used to be the go to chain for meme coins deployment and trading. But I think what's interesting here is that two things. So meme coin, I think no matter how bad reputation it has attract over time, has really tested Solana capability for high volume and high frequency trading. But also what's important is that Solana has moved away from being the only meme coin focused chain into other trading, asset trading as well, including Prop AMM or stablecoin swap, etc.. Meme culture actually decreased from close to 50% in 2024 to almost 15% by the end of 2025, and this has signaled market maturity. Solana has kind of mature from the meme coin era into an era for multiple and diverse asset trading type. And of course, you mentioned foreign L1 trading on Solana. Solana has gradually, I think pushed itself towards the vision of being a centralized exchange where users can just stay on one chain and use one trading at trading venue, in order to trade everything all at once. So they don't have to jump from chain to chain. They don't have to use bridges. They can trade all of the asset that they prefer, from meme coin to tokenized equities to foreign L1 asset in one chain with a unified trading experience and with fast execution and low fees.
Remy: Well, DJ, we will have to leave it there for today. But thank you so much for joining us and thank you for sharing your insights as well as your perspective.
DJ: Thank you for having me.