Google searches for the term “Solana” surpassed “Ethereum” for the first time in 2023 as traders became curious about movements within its ecosystem.
While Ethereum had a wide lead against Solana in search interest throughout the year, the data shifted from Dec. 17 to Dec. 23, with Solana having a search interest score of 56 to Ethereum’s 50.
According to Google Trends data, the search term Solana is set to get a score of 100 in terms of search interest from Dec. 24 to Dec. 30. Google Trends notes that a value of 100 means “peak popularity for the term.”
The data also showed that Solana attracted more search interest than Ethereum in countries such as Spain and the Philippines. However, interest in Ethereum still dominated in Indonesia, Taiwan, Morocco and others.
Meanwhile, the data also showed that users who searched Solana have shown interest in search terms like “bonk” and “tensor.” Bonk is a dog-themed memecoin that flipped Pepecoin (PEPE) in market capitalization on Dec. 8, following a 370% monthly gain. On the other hand, Tensor is a Solana-based nonfungible token marketplace that created the NFT collection Tensorians, which showed massive gains in the last 30 days.
Related: Solana is up 95% in December — But why are AVAX, INJ, NEAR surging even higher?
Interest in the proof-of-stake blockchain platform may have also been fueled by the recent uptick in the price of Solana’s (SOL) token. On Dec. 20, SOL’s market cap passed Ripple’s XRP (XRP) as the token’s price saw a 13.8% increase, topping $82 for the first time since May 2022 and overtaking XRP.
On Dec. 22, SOL flipped BNB (BNB), taking the spot for the fourth-largest crypto token by market capitalization. However, BNB reclaimed its spot on Dec. 29 as the SOL token returned to pre-Christmas prices.
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