Although wider markets showed periodic turbulence, Solana’s decentralized finance ecosystem asserted clear dominance during the early November DeFi weekend, driven by sharply rising TVL and trading volumes across its leading protocols. The network recorded a 40% TVL increase from November 2-8, 2025, lifting on-chain value to over $6 billion in that span, and this surge reflected concentrated activity in major protocols such as Kamino, Jupiter, and Raydium, which reported approximately $2.8 billion, $2.6 billion, and $2.3 billion respectively. These gains built on broader quarterly momentum, as Q3 2025 TVL rose 32.7% quarter-over-quarter to $11.5 billion, signaling sustained capital inflows and growing user engagement. The combination of deep liquidity and integrated protocol features improved execution quality, attracting traders and liquidity providers during high-traffic periods.
Solana’s DEX ecosystem registered outsized spot volume, with daily volumes rising about 17% to roughly $4 billion in late 2025, and during the peak weekend surpassed the combined volumes of Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, an outcome enabled by the chain’s low fees and high throughput. Transaction costs near $0.00025 and theoretical throughput reaching tens of thousands of transactions per second allowed frequent, capital-efficient trading, while Raydium’s hybrid AMM and order-book model, leveraging Serum, offered superior price execution for large orders. Institutional interest also contributed materially, with over $420 million in inflows noted in early November and the availability of CME-listed Solana futures and options facilitating larger participants’ access. Jupiter’s Ultra v3 underpinned much of the high-quality routing and low-slippage execution that helped drive the weekend surge.
Network fundamentals supported this activity, as more than 64.8% of SOL supply was staked, equating to approximately $60 billion, and the market capitalization hovered near $108 billion with SOL trading in the $168–$196 range during November 2025. Concurrently, the expanding stablecoin base reached $14.1 billion and RWA tokenization grew, with RWA TVL up 41.9% to $682 million, broadening DeFi use cases. Institutional inflows continued to reinforce confidence in the network’s outlook.
Nonetheless, risks persisted; the DeFi sector faced heightened exploit activity and notable losses elsewhere, which underscored security and regulatory vulnerabilities that could affect sentiment. Observers noted Solana’s resilience, but cautioned that continued protocol audits and systemic safeguards would be necessary to sustain growth.
