- Solana faced significant congestion as meme coins tied to Trump and Melania saw increased blockchain traffic.
- Despite reaching an ATH of $295.31, Solana’s price dropped 18.52% to $240.81 due to congestion-related issues.
- Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson highlighted Solana’s scalability issues and suggested Cardano’s ability far better than Solana’s.
Charles Hoskinson of Cardano has recently observed a significant challenge for Solana. This has particularly been observed with the surge in blockchain traffic driven by meme coins linked to President-elect Donald Trump and incoming First Lady Melania Trump.
Solana’s native token, SOL, saw a great price increase, and those underlying issues within its infrastructure became apparent in the short term. On this note, Charles Hoskinson didn’t shy away from offering his critique on the underlying issue.
Moreover, in a post on X on January 20, Hoskinson addressed the broader issue of scalability in the cryptocurrency space.
He pointed out, “Surges like these can be handled naturally and without disruption or added cost,” highlighting Cardano’s ability to manage high transaction volumes more efficiently than Solana during such events.
Continue reading to know more.
Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson Critiques Solana’s Scalability, & Offers Solutions With Leios and Hydra
The recent launch of the TRUMP and MELANIA meme coins on the Solana blockchain sparked a surge in transaction volume. However, this surge led to congestion, and the Solana team has been scrambling to find a solution to the scalability issue.
Experts noted that the Solana team wasn’t adequately prepared for such a massive spike in activity. This is where Charles Hoskinson joined the conversation. He pointed out that this situation is exactly why Cardano developed solutions like “Leios and Hydra.”

According to Charles Hoskinson, ADA can handle such traffic efficiently without adding extra costs to app builders. He emphasized that the Leios upgrade to Cardano’s consensus mechanism could easily address the scalability challenges currently facing Solana.
Similarly, back in September 2024, Hoskinson claimed that Leios would make Cardano faster than Solana. The primary goal of Leios is to significantly boost the network’s throughput by separating transaction processing from network consensus.
Additionally, Charles Hoskinson highlighted Hydra, which is a scaling protocol designed for Cardano. This enables parallel transaction processing and can seamlessly integrate with decentralized apps (DApps) and Layer-2 chains.
While Leios is still in development and has no set release date, it remains in the hands of a prototype development team, with advanced scaling potential. Meanwhile, Cardano has demonstrated Hydra’s capabilities through a gaming competition, where it broke throughput records.
However, the integration of Hydra into DApps and Layer-2 chains is still a work in progress.
Solana Faces Congestion Amid Memecoin Surge, Price Dips Below ATH
Solana recently faced significant congestion due to the unexpected launch of two meme coins.
As these tokens gained popularity, network traffic surged, causing notable strain on Solana’s infrastructure. On this, Charles Hoskinson commented, too, that his Cardano would have handled it with ease.
The tokens quickly gained traction upon release. Consequently, Solana’s value skyrocketed to an all-time high (ATH) of $295.31.
However, this surge also exposed some underlying issues with the network’s scalability, particularly its occasional transaction failures during periods of high activity, such as the memecoin launch.
During these congested times, users experienced slower transaction confirmations and possibly higher fees, which some analysts believe may have affected trust in Solana.

As a result, the price of SOL has dropped from its ATH to $240.81, marking an 18.52% decline. Despite this downturn, investor confidence remains strong, with trading volume showing a notable increase.
Disclaimer
In this article, the views, and opinions stated by the author, or any people named are for informational purposes only, and they don’t establish the investment, financial, or any other advice. Trading or investing in cryptocurrency assets comes with a risk of financial loss.