Solana (SOL) is continuing to break new ground, gaining 22% in the past 24 hours to reach a new all-time high of US$177.95 at press time, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com.
Fast facts
- It has been a historic run for the network, which rose 45% over the previous week to reach its previous all-time high of US$150.19 on Saturday. After breaking into the crypto top 10 in mid-August, Solana has only continued to grow from there, recently overtaking Dogecoin in seventh place with a current market cap of almost US$51 billion.
- Solana has been marketed as one of the leading contenders to be an Ethereum killer due to its high transaction speeds — which are 6,000 times faster than Ethereum and 40 times faster than Visa — and its cross-chain communication bridge, Wormhole. The network also supports non-fungible tokens, with the “Degenerate Ape Academy” NFT series selling out its 10,000 unique NFTs in eight minutes following its launch in mid-August.
- Speaking with Forkast.News, Ben Caselin, head of research for the exchange AAX — which listed Solana a few months ago — said while the token had obviously been performing quite well recently, it was difficult to make long-term price predictions for emerging tokens like Solana.
- “Maybe for Bitcoin, we can say as a base layer money, we see these really kind of strong signs of adoption, country adoption, sovereign wealth funds — ok, we can talk in decade terms. But when it comes to something like Solana or even Ethereum, I think we’re going to have to see how this plays out. As communities grow, and that includes Solana, the use cases grow and the adoption curve continues. This is going to continue for quite some time.”
- While Caselin doesn’t necessarily think other altcoins are going to “kill” Ethereum, he does believe the term has its place: “The whole term of Ethereum killing is useful just to remind people that we cannot take for granted that Ethereum is up there in the second place,” he said. “Solana is absolutely coming for that spot, and that battle has to play out. But it’s not just Solana versus Ethereum, it’s all the smart contract platforms that are battling over market share.”
