How did Solana become the most remarkable resurgence in the history of Web3?

Author: Jeff Albus, Blockworks; Translator: Wuzhu, Golden Finance

For the first part of this article, click 《The Origin of Solana: How to Turn Ideas into Reality? 》

For the second part of this article, click 《The Origin of Solana: How Alameda and FTX Bring SOL into the Abyss》

By the beginning of 2023, you’d be forgiven for thinking Solana is done. Sure, it’s been abandoned by the industry at large. But the network’s story doesn’t end there. Instead, it has had one of the most remarkable recoveries in Web3 history — fueled not by institutional backing or VC largesse, but by a committed community and a wave of new experiments that would redefine what Web3 means.

The first and perhaps most important shift came with Solana’s brand.Early on, Solana positioned itself as an institutional blockchain. It was supposed to be the high-speed network for the next generation of DeFi power users — it likened itself at the time to a “decentralized Nasdaq.” But the institutional money has disappeared, and many of the elaborate financial products built on those promises have collapsed. Instead, a grassroots, community-driven movement has begun to fill the void, leaning heavily on the internet’s irreverent culture: self-deprecating humor, group copy-paste, and most importantly, memes.

Solana became the blockchain for the average person.

This shift was crystallized by the rise of Bonk, a memecoin launched in late 2022. Unlike most corporate-backed projects, Bonk spread widely across the community, embodying a playful yet deeply resonant ethos. It brought new users to the ecosystem and restored some of the energy lost in the FTX fallout. As the perceived value of the meme gained social acceptance, the mood became heated again as crypto’s “next big thing” emerged. Sensing this change in fortunes, three British entrepreneurs — Noah Tweedale, Alon Cohen, and Dylan Kerler — opened Pump.fun in January 2024. It was a cultural force. The platform made it easier (and cheaper) than ever to create and trade tokens, and it was nearly instantaneous. This democratization drove a surge in speculative but highly engaging on-chain activity.

Meanwhile, Solana is making significant technical progress. Blinks introduces a new paradigm for seamless, native blockchain transactions, where users can transact directly from their X-feed. Firedancer, a new validator client developed by Jump Crypto, enters development with the goal of improving network stability and reducing the risk of outages. State compression technology significantly reduces the cost of minting and storing non-fungible assets. Smart Wallets leverage account abstraction, replacing traditional seed phrases with multi-factor authentication.

In just a few months, the recovery of the Solana creator community has quickly gained narrative clarity. Builders who stuck around through the worst of the bear market now have better infrastructure, lower costs, and a more engaged retail community. SOL’s price hovered below $10 after FTX before steadily climbing. By early 2024, the asset climbed back above $100, and its DeFi and NFT ecosystems are once again thriving.

The sentiment has changed. As the price surpasses FTX’s previous all-time high, Solana has transformed into one of the most dynamic, unpredictable, and community-driven networks in Web3 history. It’s proving that ecosystems live and die not by their backers, but by the resilience of their builders and users.

Our industry often abandons failed projects. When sentiment changes and capital moves on, we tend to declare a network dead, reallocate resources, and chase the next trend. But Solana has done something rare: it has survived, adapted, and thrived — not because it was favored, but because its community refused to let it die. In a space where narratives are being written and rewritten at a breakneck pace, Solana is proof that being the underdog is sometimes the best advantage.