Solana had a near-death experience in November 2022 when FTX — its biggest backer — collapsed. SOL fell from $32 to $8 in two weeks and most of the Solana DeFi ecosystem lost liquidity. Every obituary treated the chain as dead.
The comeback, led by Jupiter for aggregation, Jito for liquid staking, Tensor for NFTs and pump.fun for memecoin launches, has been one of the most dramatic recoveries in crypto history. By early 2024 Solana was back in the top five L1s; by early 2025 it was consistently leading on daily active addresses.
For the broader picture see the Layer 1 sector and the meme coins sector — Solana has been the main venue for memecoin launches for two straight years. Data below is live from CoinGecko.