Solana Hits 100 Million Active Wallets, But Most Are Empty: What Happened?
$SOL has just hit a new milestone with over 100 million monthly active wallets, according to data from Artemis Terminal. This is a huge jump compared to just 509,000 monthly active wallets recorded at the beginning of 2024. However, deeper data shows that most of those wallets are empty, sparking speculation that this growth may be due to bots manipulating activity metrics.
Most Wallets Are Empty: What Causes It?
According to Solana data provider Hello Moon, over 86 million active wallets in the past month had no SOL balances at all. Around 15.5 million wallets had less than 1 SOL, and only 1.5 million users had less than 10 SOL.
According to Justin d'Anethan, head of APAC business development at Keyrock, the majority of wallets on Solana are worth less than $10, indicating activity that may not be entirely organic. While the Solana ecosystem is very active, there is criticism about whether this growth is truly driven by human users or simply the result of bot activity.
One reason why many wallets on Solana are empty is due to interactions with centralized exchanges ( CEXs ) or DeFi applications. According to Dan Hughes, founder of DeFi platform Radix DLT, some centralized exchanges use proxy addresses. This means that when a user sends tokens to the exchange, the receiving address used is actually a proxy that immediately transfers the tokens to the exchangeâs hot wallet, while the balance remains empty on the original address.
This also applies to some DeFi services that use intermediary addresses to make fast transactions between wallets, which leaves the balance on the original wallet empty.
