The most bought tokens for the past week belonged to DEX and DeFi projects, with ORCA appearing as the top gainer. Other leading narratives included L1, L2, memes and AI projects.
Market cap growth singled out a selection of new top gainers in the past week. ORCA expanded by 62.3%, after breaking out from lows of $1.50. The Solana DEX project managed to reach $2.80, becoming one of the top gainers for the past week. The success of ORCA follows a revival of Solana-based tokens, including MEW and WIF.
Other top tokens underscored recent trends in Web3 and decentralized finance. Helium and Jito also reflected the increased interest in Solana usage, as they benefited from transaction growth. OpenChat (CHAT) rallied ahead of its August 1st listing on Lbank and Bitrue. Ramses Exchange (RAM) rallied after a new incentive program launched, though the project is also extremely small and volatile. RAM has a fully diluted market capitalization of $22M, and is the riskiest token among this week’s gainers.
Also Read: Jupiter takes up to 80% of Solana priority fees from JupSOL
Maple Finance (MPL) also gained more than 54%, after gradually growing its volumes and value locked for months in 2024.
In the case of ORCA, more than 11% of the tokens were traded in a single day, as the asset’s action accelerated. ORCA is yet to recover its trading volumes from the previous bull cycle, and the recent rally happens with just $15M in daily trades.
ORCA is still the token of a relatively small Solana DEX, though still following the trend of increased trading. The Orca DEX carries under $300M in value locked, but also gains inflows from the Jupiter DEX aggregator. Solana-based projects are also trending as SOL approaches the $200 tier with further predicted growth in 2024.
There is some skepticism around ORCA, as the token’s volumes rely heavily on Coinbase. For some, the recent price action is not organic, but reflects a deliberate price pump. At this price level, some traders are taking profits and can potentially break up the rally.
Tokens that investors have been buying into over the past week: pic.twitter.com/hJIBqPqyl5
— Token Terminal (@tokenterminal) July 22, 2024
ORCA reflects growth of DEX tokens and Solana-based activity
The Orca DEX currently carries around 4.17% of all trading volumes. Along with the token rally, Orca expanded its activity by 16% in the past week. The DEX is the fourth most active after Uniswap, Raydium and PancakeSwap. ORCA is seen as a reflection of the general trend in DEX tokens and a relatively smaller exchange with growth potential. Yet most DEX tokens are still focused on the Ethereum ecosystem, while ORCA is a single-chain DEX, reflecting Solana’s platform growth.
Also Read: Koreans trade MEW meme token more than Bitcoin (BTC)
One of the reasons for the growth of Raydium and Orca is an increase in Solana-based DeFi. Value locked on Solana is still at $5.27B, though some projects and apps see bigger inflows. Solana still sees around 50% of its deals coming from bots, based on blockchain data. Bots manage to bring higher volumes to Solana, but in the past months, the number of persons trading on DEX also increased organically.
Retail buyers also flocked to Solana, with an uptick in traders for orders under $100. The trend highlights the constant minting and trading of new meme tokens.
Smart money also presents a list of potential gainers
Token tips take into account recent behaviors from smart wallets. DEX-based trading singled out a new group of tokens that are undergoing accumulation.
Smart traders showed signs of buying MakerDAo (MKR), Ondo (ONDO), Bittensor (TAO), and Injective (INJ). Those tokens were bought in million-dollar purchases by top whale wallets.
Other metrics of accumulation include reserves on centralized exchanges. Based on that metric, Chainlink (LINK) is undergoing re-accumulation. In the past month, there was a drawdown of LINK tokens from centralized markets, which has predicted rallies in the fall of 2023.
In the past month, several major narratives have been taking turns in making price spikes. Memes lead the pack with growing volumes, but activity also came from the AI narrative, as well as L1 and L2 tokens.
Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva