Phantom wallet handles $1.25B in Solana swaps during goldrush for TRUMP tokens

Since the weekend launch of Official Trump (TRUMP) on Solana, Phantom has carried the bulk of the traffic surge on the network. Phantom Wallet completed $1.25B in swaps, with users noticing delays in transactions. 

Record DEX activity on Solana led to $1.25B in volumes swapped directly through the Phantom wallet. The rush to buy and trade Official Trump (TRUMP) led to peak activity, as Phantom handled 10M transactions in a 24-hour window. 

Transactions are landing much smoother now and all systems should be back to normal.

Despite all the challenges, our users swapped over $1.25B in volume and made 10M transactions today.

Huge thanks to the @0xMert_/@heliuslabs and @ethanyish/@AlliumLabs teams for helping us…

— Phantom (@phantom) January 20, 2025

The launch of the TRUMP token was a moment of rapid mainstream interest in Solana. Searches on Google peaked at 100 points on January 20, signaling most Solana services would see unprecedented inflows of onboarding for new users.

Investors turned to Phantom to trade TRUMP 

Phantom was the most user-friendly pathway into Solana, ranking at position 93 as the most popular finance app in the USA. The activity on Solana was the equivalent of a week of transactions on Ethereum (ETH), where activity slowed down due to high fees.

Phantom is also among the top finance apps in Ireland, Russia, Mexico, and other crypto-friendly markets, reflecting the global rush to buy promising memecoins. 

Solana saw around 4.85M users per day, within its usual range. However, the large number of transactions and workload came from DEX routing and token swaps. Users are still reporting failed transactions and even lost funds after the surge. Some of the transactions also sent funds to centralized exchanges. 

The recent trading and transaction spree was a live stress test for Phantom, though well within Solana’s capabilities. The wallet received up to 8M requests per minute from global users, as it offered unlimited onboarding. Real traders made up around 60% of Solana activity, with bots making around 40% of swaps.

Jito SOL block-building engine was also under unprecedented stress. The Jito Labs block engine API suffered service outages, causing a live stress test. The Jito Labs team moved in to repair the damage while meeting unprecedented demand for trading. Solana itself did not have problems with consensus and did not stop producing blocks. 

Solana carried peak traffic as Orca took the lead

The rapid transaction volume once again lifted Raydium to become the biggest fee producer for the past day. Raydium had $32.48M in daily fees, followed by top Solana validator and MEV builder JitoSOL. 

This time, Orca emerged as one of the most widely used exchanges, producing more than $9.34M in daily fees. The Solana main chain had $13.53M in 24-hour fees due to increased traffic. 

The chain also increased its transaction success rate to over 76%, as users paid bribes and priority fees. On usual days, Solana carries around 67% of successful transactions, due to lower urgency. 

The traffic on Solana was highly targeted, concentrated between fiat and SOL swaps and memecoin trades. The most active category of trades was for memecoins outside the Pump.fun ecosystem, primarily due to the rush for the newly launched TRUMP token, as well as rollovers to MELANIA, BARRON, and a series of new assets. 

Based on Blockworks data, Solana had the highest level of activity for the past three months, with daily volumes rising up to 800%. Solana’s meme token trading was concentrated on Raydium, Orca, and Meteora, depending on the available liquidity. 

Jupiter DEX aggregator also went through a live stress test

Jupiter DEX is the top app on Solana, due to demand for optimal fees and routing to exchanges. The trading hub also went through an extreme overload with the occasional loss of services.

The top developer @weremeow apologized for the failures, stating that Jupiter resumed full service after the initial wave of buyers. 

hey everyone, wanted to apologize deeply for the system instability and scaling issues.

over the last few months, we have been working super hard to stabilize and scale up all these subsystems, but we clearly have a ton to do in cases of extreme market conditions.

due to… https://t.co/B9QY8mb456

— meow (🐱, 🐐) (@weremeow) January 20, 2025

Jupiter’s failure caused delays and potential losses for individual traders, who missed out on sniping the tokens early. Some could not buy in the first minutes after coins launched, as they were front-ran by bots and users that paid higher fees.

Others lost SOL on high fees, which are charged from the wallet even for failed transactions.

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