Bitquery's analysis of Solana decentralized exchange activity from Aug. 24 through Sept. 22 identified significant concerns about reported trading volumes. The blockchain data company flagged $117.7 billion of $201.4 billion in dollar-valued trades as circular or bot-like activity, challenging the use of gross volume as a measure of genuine trading demand.
The flagged trades were primarily characterized by repeated round trips, where traders bought and sold the same token through the same pool within a single transaction. Approximately $111.6 billion of the flagged amount, or 95 percent, involved this same-pool buy-and-sell pattern.
Bitquery also identified two groups of wallets with remarkably similar trading patterns. One group contained 20 wallets and another contained 50 wallets, together accounting for $26.3 billion of the flagged activity. The firm grouped wallets by trading volumes and token counts without tracing their funding sources.
The analysis raises practical questions about actual liquidity. A September 14 example showed two wallets trading nearly identical volumes of a token called Claude through the same PumpSwap pool in a single transaction, recording about $2,000 in volume. When examined later, the pool showed effectively empty reserves and $0 in liquidity.
DefiLlama's Solana DEX dashboard reported $75.9 billion in rolling 30-day volume as of Sept. 24, compared to Bitquery's 58.4 percent flagged rate. Bitquery's same-date comparison found $83.7 billion of its indexed trades fell outside its flagged category, while DefiLlama counted $78.8 billion for the same period.
The two firms use different methodologies. DefiLlama counts pools meeting specific criteria including at least $5,000 in total value locked and at least 50 unique traders. Bitquery instead screens transactions and wallet behavior patterns.
Experts note that neither approach captures the actual liquidity available to independent traders. Understanding execution quality requires analysis of specific token pairs, trade sizes, and timestamps, along with historical pool reserves and realized fills on comparable routes. Pool trading history alone does not indicate current depth or the price impact a trader would face.
Bitquery's analysis underscores the need for detailed examination of who generates Solana's reported DEX volume and where trades occur, rather than relying on aggregate figures alone.
