Solana (SOL), the fifth largest cryptocurrency in the industry, saw a notable resurgence over the weekend, in line with the broader market rally and Bitcoin’s (BTC) rebound towards the $63,000 mark for the first time in over a week. 

SOL’s price has successfully recovered from the losses of the past few months, surpassing the $150 level and overcoming key resistance walls, coupled with an optimistic statement from Daniel Cheung, co-founder of the hedge fund Syncracy Capital, who believes that SOL is exhibiting similar fractal patterns reminiscent of the third quarter of 2021, potentially leading to explosive gains.

More Gains Ahead For SOL

In a social media post on Sunday, Cheung expressed his bullish perspective on SOL’s price action as the token closed the past week on a bullish note, also drawing comparisons to the third quarter of 2021, from which SOL’s price began its rise from a low of $27 at the end of July that year, eventually reaching its current all-time high of $259 in November 2021. 

Cheung also drew parallels to the fourth quarter of 2020, highlighting that in both cases, the most significant returns are just around the corner, suggesting that further price gains are on the cards in the last half of the year, as was the case in 2021.

Cheung further emphasized that Solana is expected to remain a hub for on-chain activity throughout the rest of this market cycle due to its accessibility to retail investors, making it an appealing asset. 

The potential introduction of a Solana exchange-traded fund (ETF), which is anticipated to have a substantial impact on SOL’s price, coupled with the increasing probability of Trump’s re-election, serves as additional fuel for the Solana ecosystem, Syncracy Capital’s co-founder stated. 

Solana Market Cap Projection

In an interesting observation, Daniel Cheung also stated that he believes the Solana ecosystem can ” likely” reach 50% of Ethereum’s market capitalization this cycle as optimism around the blockchain grows. 

Currently, Solana boasts a market cap of $71 billion, significantly lower than Ethereum’s $403 billion. Still, according to Cheung’s analysis, if SOL were to reach 50% of Ethereum’s market cap, its market capitalization would reach a staggering $280 billion, triggering an exponential rise in SOL’s price and pushing it to new all-time highs.

It remains to be seen whether this latter scenario will play out, with expectations of a more favorable regulatory framework in the US, with the potential for new legislation for the industry with a Trump victory in the November election and the potential approval of the anticipated Solana ETF market. 

Nonetheless, Solana is trading at $152 at the time of writing, up over 6% in the 24-hour time frame and a significant 438% year-to-date. 

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com 

The post Bullish Solana Forecast: Expert Sees SOL Reaching 50% Of ETH’s Market Cap This Cycle appeared first on CryptoSens.

Since trading firms like FTX collapsed in November 2022, the Solana blockchain has seen significant gains and regained investor confidence, with Ethereum developers increasingly migrating to it. 

According to a recent analysis by Jack Inabinet, Senior Analyst at Bankless, with significant growth in key metrics and SOL’s year-to-date increase of 770%, Solana has solidified its position as a top-tier blockchain. Native teams within the Solana ecosystem played a key role in its resurgence, but now non-native protocols are also seizing the opportunity. 

Developers Deliver On Hype

Solana’s comeback, from a low of $8 in December 2022 to an annual high of $210 in March, is one of the most notable uptrends of this bull cycle. However, the ecosystem’s growth extends beyond its native token holders.

According to Inabinet, developers have delivered on the hype, starting with the PYTH airdrop, the Pyth network’s native token. This incentivized users from different ecosystems to explore SOL by assigning tokens to addresses interacting with Pyth oracles across multiple networks. 

Additionally, Solana-native liquid staking protocol Jito Labs conducted its airdrop, catalyzing “mass adoption” through points-based incentive systems.

While Solana-native protocols laid the foundation for the platform’s mainstream adoption, Ethereum developers are increasingly migrating to SOL. Inabinet highlights that recognizing the significant on-chain activity within Solana, projects are eager to capitalize on the opportunity. 

Ethereum Developers Flock To Solana

For example, the decentralized compute-sharing network Render migrated its token to the Solana Program Library (SPL) standard, and MetaMask introduced Solana compatibility by introducing “Snaps.” 

In addition, according to Inabinet, Aave, Ethereum’s first lending destination, has approved the deployment of a minimally viable version of its V3 isolated money market through Neon Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), a compatible Ethereum development environment built on top of Solana. 

Proposals for independent deployments, such as the EVM-based perpetual trading platform GMX, further demonstrate the growing interest in SOL.

However, the analyst noted that Ethereum and Solana have different approaches to scaling, with Ethereum opting for network fragmentation and Solana favoring a unified state. 

Given these approaches, Inabinet suggests that Solana’s alternative vision of blockchain offers attractive features, attracting developers seeking scalability and concentration of use. 

Nonetheless, the analyst cautions that developers must take a diversified approach to maximize success and secure market share. Inabinet concluded: 

The crypto industry must hurdle a massive chasm of uncertainty to progress from infancy into an end-state where true adoption is achieved, and trillions upon trillions of dollars in traditional assets make their way on-chain. Until then, application developers succumbing to blind chain loyalty are leaving money and market share on the table.

As of press time, SOL has seen a 5% increase in the last 24 hours, resulting in a current trading price of $171, with the next price hurdle at $176. 

Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com

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The race to achieve the fastest blockchain transaction processing speeds is heating up, Solana (SOL) is in the spotlight as a new report from crypto data aggregator CoinGecko reveals some surprising findings. 

The study analyzes the real-world transaction per second (TPS) performance of a range of large blockchain networks, both Ethereum-based and non-Ethereum (ETH) Virtual Machine (EVM) protocols.

Solana Emerges As The Undisputed Speed Champion

According to the findings, Solana has proven to be the fastest among large blockchains, with its actual daily average transactions per second (TPS) reaching a record high of 1,504 on April 6th, 202. Notably, this figure makes Solana 46 times faster than Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Furthermore, Solana’s TPS is more than 5 times faster than Polygonm (MATIC), which currently holds the highest TPS among Ethereum scaling solutions.

According to CoinGecko, this demonstrates the superior processing power of the non-EVM blockchain and its ability to handle a large influx of transactions, especially during periods of heightened market activity, such as the recent Memecoin mania, specifically within the Solana network.

However, it’s important to note that despite Solana’s performance, the blockchain has only achieved 1.6% of its “theoretical maximum speed” of 65,000 TPS. This suggests that there is still significant room for improvement, and the network’s upcoming upgrades will be closely watched to see how quickly it can record even higher real TPS.

Ethereum Scaling Solutions Lag Behind Non-EVM Blockchains

The second-fastest blockchain in the study is another non-EVM protocol, Sui (SUI), which recorded its highest real TPS of 854 in July 2023 as the on-chain game Sui 8192 gained popularity. Other fast blockchains among the non-EVMs include The Open Network (TON) at 175 TPS and Near Protocol (NEAR) at 118 TPS.

In contrast, the non-EVM blockchains that have recorded relatively lower real processing speeds are Aptos (49 TPS), Starknet (12 TPS), Bitcoin (11 TPS), and Thorchain (2 TPS). 

Collectively, the 8 non-EVM large blockchains have an average peak TPS of 284, which is 3.9 times faster than the 17 largest EVM and EVM-compatible blockchains, which have an average of just 74 TPS.

The EVM-compatible blockchain that has achieved the fastest real TPS is BNB Smart Chain (BSC), which recorded 378 TPS on December 7th, 2023, amid the surge in on-chain activity driven by the inscriptions craze. This performance places BSC as the fastest Ethereum-based blockchain, though it still lags behind the top non-EVM protocols.

Similarly, the surge driven by inscriptions allowed Polygon to record 190 TPS on November 16th, 2023, making it the fastest among the largest Ethereum scaling solutions and 8.4 times faster than Ethereum itself. However, the leading non-EVM blockchains still outpacing even Polygon’s impressive speed.

At press time, SOL was trading at $168, up nearly 7% in the last 24 hours and registering an impressive 720% gain year-to-date. 

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com 

The post Solana Takes The Crown: CoinGecko Ranks It The Best, Leaving Ethereum Behind In Key Metric appeared first on CryptoSens.

Solana has continued its bullish sentiment in its ecosystem to flip Ethereum in the stablecoin market for the second week in a row, according to on-chain data. SOL’s price gain has slowed in the past week, showing a negative 2.3% in a 7-day timeframe at the time of writing. However, stablecoin transfers on the Solana chain reveal the blockchain retaining its reputation as an Ethereum killer, registering more than $10.3 billion more trading volume in the last week.

Stablecoins Growing On Solana

Ethereum has mostly dominated the stablecoin market since the inception of Tether USDT. However, according to data from the crypto analytics platform Artemis, stablecoin trading volume on Solana surpassed Ethereum last week for the second week in a row, showing how quickly Solana is gaining traction. Solana registered $40.86 billion in stablecoin volume, compared to Ethereum’s trading volume of $30.31 billion.

On-chain numbers since December demonstrate that SOL is quickly becoming the chain of choice for stablecoin usage and transactions. Solana surpassed Ethereum in stablecoin volume for the first time in the week leading to December 25. During this period, SOL registered a weekly stablecoin trading volume of $103.01 billion, $12.14 billion more than Ethereum’s volume of $90.87 billion.    

Solana also went on a crazy surge last year, registering over a 950% gain as it reached a yearly high of $121. During this period, we saw Solana compete vigorously with Ethereum across various metrics. 

Stablecoin trading volume, in particular, is at a 2,213% gain in a 3-month timeframe. The chain also witnessed 27.17 million stablecoin transactions in the same timeframe, compared to Ethereum’s 1.17 million transactions. 

DeFi aggregator DeFiLlama also shows DEX trading volume on SOL soared to $28.13 billion in December, surpassing Ethereum L2 chains Arbitrum and Polygon. Solana also overtook Ethereum in NFT trading volume in early December.

SOL Price To $200?

The Solana ecosystem is expanding quickly, as evidenced by price surges and on-chain metrics. The price surge can also be attributed to various airdrops and the hype surrounding BONK, the first meme coin on the Solana chain. As more people buy and trade SOL and other assets on the blockchain, demand for the SOL coin is likely to increase.

Related Reading: Is A Bitcoin Spot ETF Approval A Sell The News Event? Experts Respond

At the time of writing, SOL is trading at $107, down by 5.74% and 3.44% in the past 24 hours and seven days respectively. It is now facing resistance at around $115, and a failure to rally above this price point could lead to a continued consolation toward support at $100. 

While there are never any guarantees, SOL’s strong fundamentals point to a potential price appreciation throughout the year and SOL’s path to revisiting the $200 price level and beyond. 

If Solana continues to also outpace Ethereum and Ethereum L2 chains on key metrics and grows its real-world utility, $200 could be on the horizon sooner than most investors would expect. 

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