June 26, 2025 — Halfway through 2025, Solana’s year-to-remember includes volatility, innovation and high-profile moments, ETNews reports.
1. Alpenglow: Solana’s Landmark Upgrade
At the Solana Accelerate conference in May, Anza Labs announced the Alpenglow protocol upgrade, presented as the network’s most significant evolution to date.
Initiated when Anza hired researchers who identified weaknesses in Solana’s original consensus mechanism (proof-of-history), the overhaul promises to reduce transaction finality confirmation time by a claimed factor of 100 and overhaul the core sequencing mechanism.
If implemented by December, the upgrade could position Solana for significantly accelerated transaction processing capabilities.
2. Donald Trump Launches Solana Memecoin
Following his inauguration, former President Donald Trump unveiled a dedicated memecoin on the Solana network.
The launch triggered significant network congestion as users attempted to acquire the token, which contributed to Solana’s native coin SOL reaching new all-time highs briefly. Concurrently, the token’s introduction notably increased Solana’s on-chain USDC supply.
While controversial among some within the community, the move underscored the Solana platform’s reach and capacity to handle high-profile projects, even if fleeting.
3. SIMD-228 Token Inflation Proposal Fails
In January, a significant governance proposal, SIMD-228, was put forward. Sponsored by Multicoin Capital’s Tushar Jain within Lightspeed’s community, the motion aimed to adjust Solana’s token inflation mechanism.
Seeking to reduce inflation rates and introduce complexity into the system, the proposal garnered substantial attention and voting rights from validators. However, despite support from notable figures within the ecosystem, it ultimately failed to secure the necessary votes to implement changes.
The closely contested outcome reflected the competitive interests and cautious perspectives within the Solana validator community regarding network incentives.
4. Pump.fun Raises $1 Billion via Token Sale
In March, pump.fun, Solana’s widely used decentralized trading platform, made headlines by concluding a Series A funding round significantly undervalued by parts of the Solana ecosystem.
Initially met with surprise by observers like the reported author whose reaction was ‘What?’ followed by a profound ‘Huh?’, the $4 billion valuation token sale successfully raised over $1 billion in private and public offerings, marking a seminal moment for the memecoin infrastructure provider.
Despite criticisms framing the fundraising as potentially extracting value from a platform generating substantial trading fees, the market response supported the valuation, indicating strong confidence in pump.fun’s position within the Solana ecosystem.
5. Raydium Establishes Own Launchpad
In response to the planned departure of major memecoin launch client pump.fun from the Raydium ecosystem late last month, Raydium reacted swiftly, launching its own integrated memecoin platform approximately three weeks ago.
While initial adoption was slow, the initiative appeared to gain traction quickly, with Raydium’s launchpad eventually capturing over half the market share for simultaneous Solana token launches within weeks, compared to the previous dominant share held by pump.fun.
The shift represents a change in Solana’s DEX (Decentralized Exchange) dynamics following months largely dominated by a single centralized trading venue on the network.
