SOL has been quite magical recently: on the surface, after the meme heat faded, on-chain activity has indeed plummeted, and user volume has been significantly taken away by Base and Arbitrum. However, there are undercurrents – Q3 TVL rose by 26%, the scale of stablecoins tripled, Alpenglow has cut confirmation time to 150 milliseconds (on par with Binance), and Firedancer's TPS has surpassed one million.

Pump.fun that wave proved what true skill is: 500 million dollars raised in 12 minutes, DEX as solid as a rock, while several major exchanges' APIs lagged behind. What does this indicate? Decentralized infrastructure is starting to counterattack CEX in extreme scenarios.

But the problem is: SOL is now somewhat locked under the label of "gambling chain." Hyperliquid has taken the spotlight for high-frequency trading, Base has consumed the narrative for consumer applications, and new stablecoin chains (Tempo, Arc) are also sharing the cake of ETH and Tron. Whether SOL can shake off the "casino chain" stigma depends on whether it can continuously come up with new innovations.

To be honest, from a hard power perspective, SOL is not inferior to any L1: its speed is fast enough, its ecosystem is large enough, and the enthusiasm of developers is high (funding in Q3 is still flowing towards new directions such as HFT infrastructure, prediction markets, and RWA). Even if some trading flows towards application chains, SOL's position as a high-performance public chain is hard to shake. The question is not whether it can survive, but whether it can tell a new story.