The price of Solana (SOL) — the native cryptocurrency of the Solana blockchain — is expected to end the year at US$235 on average, before soaring to US$1,178 by the end of 2025, according to the average of forecasts collected from a panel of 50 fintech specialists surveyed for Finder’s most recent Solana Price Predictions Report.
Solana, which hit multiple new all-time highs (ATHs) this week, is currently trading at US$240, according to CoinGecko data. Solana reached a peak of US$249.64 on Nov. 4 and has overtaken Tether (USDT) as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of US$73 billion.
The Finder panel predicts that Solana’s price will reach US$5,057 by 2030. The survey of crypto experts by Finder — a data and analysis firm headquartered in Sydney — was conducted from Sept. 24 to Oct. 11 this year. Panelists are allowed to own cryptocurrencies, including Solana. The survey results were based on a truncated mean, with the outlier responses in the top and bottom 10% removed.
Does Solana have an edge over Ethereum?
Slightly over half (51%) of the panellists believed that Solana’s proof-of-history network will give it an edge over Ethereum. 23% were unsure. Solana uses a combination of proof-of-stake (PoS) and proof-of-history (PoH) consensus mechanisms to improve throughput and scalability. The network claims to support 50,000 transactions per second (TPS), making it the fastest blockchain in the world.
“We think that SOL is one of a few smart contract-based blockchains that have the technical architecture that will be difficult for Ethereum to compete with on the basis of transaction speed and transaction cost, Panxora Crypto Hedge Fund general partner Gavin Smith told Finder. “For smart contract usage especially in DeFi these factors are a critical success indicator.” Smith predicts that Solana will be worth US$250 by the end of 2021.
See related article: What is the Solana ecosystem and how is it fueling SOL’s stratospheric rise?
Solana’s security problems
Amid its explosive growth this year, the Solana blockchain came to an abrupt halt on Sept. 14 and went offline for 17 hours due to a denial of service (DDoS) attack. The network outage has raised questions over Solana’s security and the trade-off over decentralization and high performance.
Global cryptocurrency editor at Finder, Keegan Francis, said in the report that the DDoS attack highlighted some major issues at the core of SOL. “The DDoS attack on Solana exposed the fact that a centralized group of actors can pause the blockchain, something that is really not commensurate with my beliefs about what a decentralized blockchain should be. Who is to say that an authority cannot demand the same to be done?”
Coinmama CEO Sagi Bakshi said the DDoS attack was indicative of an inherent problem and told Finder he believed SOL will eventually be worth just US$50 by 2030. “I have no idea if Solana will survive, nothing at this point can indicate that it will succeed.”
Alex Nagoskii from DigitalX told Finder he sees the DDoS attack as a minor road bump and believes Solana will gather momentum towards the end of the year. “Solana has proven they can respond quickly to challenges, turning over an update to over 1,000 validators in less than a day. In the process, they have found the limit to the (very impressive) number of transactions per second that the network can handle and would have taken away valuable lessons from the experience.”
See related article: What will Ethereum prices be as 2021 ends?