NODO Weekly: Solana’s DEX Shakeup & Ethereum’s Smart Wallet Future

This week’s charts spotlight two major storylines: the reshuffling of power in Solana’s DEX ecosystem and Ethereum’s post-Pectra evolution. Raydium remains the top DEX on Solana, but rising platforms like Meteora and Pump.fun’s new AMM are eating into its share. 

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s biggest upgrade since The Merge is already reshaping how users stake, transact, and build, with over 33,000 smart accounts created since Pectra went live. I also track validator behavior under the new Max Effective Balance rules and unpack what it all means for the network’s future.

1. Solana DEX Wars

In Issue #65, I made the case that trading is crypto’s strongest product-market fit—and that DEXs are still the most profitable applications across the space. I also pointed out that Solana has quietly become the dominant venue for this activity, thanks to its low fees and high throughput.

Today, we’re zeroing in on the Solana DEX landscape.

Over the past 15 months, Solana recorded a staggering $1.68 trillion in DEX volume. Even more telling, 71% of that ($1.2 trillion) happened in just the last six months. Activity isn’t just growing, it’s accelerating.

At the center of this boom is Raydium, which has consistently led Solana’s DEX volume for the past year. In Q1 2025, Raydium processed $333 billion, around 50% of all Solana DEX activity. That’s a 10% increase quarter-over-quarter from Q4 2024.

But the dominance is starting to get challenged.

We’re now seeing the rise of new entrants like Meteora and SolFi. If the name Meteora sounds familiar, it’s probably because it hosted the now-iconic $TRUMP memecoin launch in January—I covered that moment in Issue #62. 

Since then, Meteora has gained serious traction. Its volumes grew 190% in Q1, reaching $97 billion and overtaking Orca to become Solana’s second-largest DEX with a 14% market share.

Still, Raydium’s recent volumes have benefited heavily from Pump.fun, which had been routing trades to Raydium’s liquidity pools. 

But now that Pump.fun has launched its own native DEX, PumpAMM, that flow is being redirected. Pump.fun no longer routes trades through Raydium, instead using its own pools.

That shift raises a big question: How will Raydium’s volume evolve over the next 9 to 12 months?

Meteora’s volumes initially plateaued after the hype surrounding the $TRUMP memecoin cooled off, but they've been surging again, thanks to the growing buzz around Believe and its “Internet Capital Market” meme. 

Believe functions similarly to Pump.fun—it’s essentially a token launchpad—but unlike Pump.fun, it routes trades directly to Meteora’s pools. That structural difference has given Meteora a fresh injection of volume and momentum.

By now, it’s almost cliché to say that memecoins account for over 50% of Solana’s DEX volume—but there’s a new twist: Pump.fun’s dominance is starting to slip. 

In Q4 2024, Pump.fun accounted for around 35% of Solana’s total DEX volume. But in Q1 2025, that number dropped to 25%—its first quarter-over-quarter decline since launch. My read? It’s likely tied to Meteora’s explosive growth.

If I had to bet, I’d say Raydium will still be Solana’s leading DEX a year from now—but its market share will shrink. As for Pump.fun, I expect its share of DEX volume to continue falling, especially as launchpads like Believe gain traction or new memecoin trading venues emerge. 

We may also see a shift as other categories, like stablecoins or AI-themed assets, start to take up a larger share of the trading pie.

That said, Pump.fun isn’t going away. It will likely remain the go-to launchpad for memecoins on Solana. But like all first movers, its dominance will erode as competition intensifies and the market matures.

2. Pectra Upgrade

Ethereum officially activated the Pectra upgrade on May 7th, combining two major protocol enhancements—Prague (execution layer) and Electra (consensus layer)—into one powerful package. It’s Ethereum’s most significant advancement since The Merge in 2022, introducing 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that elevate the network’s performance, security, and user experience.

What’s inside Pectra?

• EIP-7702 (Smart Wallets): Regular Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) can now temporarily act like smart contracts. This unlocks powerful features like one-click batched transactions, gas fee sponsorships, alternative signature schemes, and even social recovery, without changing the user’s wallet address.

• EIP-7251 (Staking Upgrades): Validators can now stake up to 2048 ETH, streamlining operations and reducing validator overhead. While this improves efficiency, it also raises questions about centralization risk.

• EIP-7691 (Layer 2 Scalability): The upgrade doubles Ethereum’s data blob capacity, giving rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism more room to scale, and significantly lowering transaction costs for end users.

Developer Features in Pectra introduce a range of improvements that enhance both the protocol and the developer experience. 

EIP-7002 brings on-chain exit triggers, allowing stakers more control over their validator lifecycle. With EIP-2935, smart contracts can now access historical block hashes, simplifying certain logic around randomness and verification. 

EIP-2537 introduces BLS12-381 cryptographic precompiles, making zero-knowledge proofs cheaper and faster on-chain. Meanwhile, EIP-7623 raises calldata costs, nudging developers toward using more efficient data blobs for Layer 2 rollups.

Why does this matter? These upgrades make Ethereum more usable, scalable, and robust. Smarter wallets powered by account abstraction improve the user experience. 

L2s get a meaningful fee reduction thanks to expanded blob capacity. Validator staking becomes more capital-efficient, bringing in enterprise-grade staking setups. And Ethereum’s role as a reliable data availability layer is strengthened, solidifying its rollup-centric roadmap.

Yes, Pectra adds new complexity, especially in gas fee mechanics and validator economics—but it's been thoroughly tested and is rolling out without major issues. 

It marks a significant move toward full account abstraction, better scalability, and a more inclusive Ethereum for users and developers alike.

3. Pectra Check in

It’s been nearly two weeks since the Pectra upgrade went live—time to check in on how things are shaping up.

Out of the 11 EIPs included, three stood out as particularly impactful: Smart Accounts (EIP-7702), Max Effective Balance (EIP-7251), and the increase in blob throughput (EIP-7691). Today, we’ll focus on the first two. Blobs deserve their own deep dive, so we’ll save that for a future issue.

Let’s start with smart accounts. Since Pectra’s rollout, over 33,000 of them have been created. These accounts allow Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to temporarily behave like smart contracts, unlocking powerful features like gas sponsorships and custom transaction logic.

Ethereum leads adoption with 46% of smart account deployments. It’s followed by L2s like Optimism (19%) and Base (17%), with Binance Smart Chain also capturing a 17% share despite being outside the Ethereum ecosystem.

The trend holds when looking at authorization market share, where Ethereum again dominates with 51%. Base and Optimism trail behind at 27% and 15%, respectively.  The data shows that most smart account activity is concentrated within Ethereum and its L2s.

Here’s how it works in practice: to upgrade a standard EOA wallet into a smart account, users authorize a smart contract. This upgraded wallet then includes a “delegation indicator” that points to the contract, allowing it to execute custom logic when a transaction is sent to the EOA. 

If a user wants to revert the wallet back to a regular EOA, they simply authorize the burn address, removing the delegation link.

Regarding Max Effective Balance (EIP-7251), we’re already seeing a clear pattern emerge: most validators are consolidating their stakes around the higher thresholds of 1,920 and 1,664 ETH. 

There’s also a noticeable concentration around the 128 ETH mark, showing a mix of both large-scale and more moderately sized participants adopting the upgrade.

If you're curious about what Max-EB really means for Ethereum’s validators, stakers, and the broader network, I’ve broken it all down in a separate piece—you can read it here.

Written by Pascal Abams — Research Analyst at NODO. I research on-chain trends, market narratives, and investment opportunities in crypto. If you have thoughts, insights, or just want to connect, reach out.

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