Solana (SOL) cryptocurrency continues to rise as altcoins rival Bitcoin and Ethereum. Here’s why

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Solana’s SOL token rose to become the seventh-most valuable cryptocurrency this week, overtaking Dogecoin on Fridayand rising by 21 per cent to reach $139.18 (€117).

In the last month, Solana has soared almost 220 per cent.

The token made its debut only 18 months ago but now has a market value of over $30 billion (€25 billion). So, what are the reasons for Solana’s rise in the cryptosphere?

The main reason Solana has attracted so much attention recently is because of the network’s entry into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which can be anything digital such as art or music that are sold with tech.

Solana launched Degenerate Ape Academy, which sold a collection of pictures of cartoon apes. 10,000 of them sold in the first 10 minutes, which then drove the SOL token higher as people needed the cryptocurrency to buy the cartoon apes.

Solana has also been helped by the August rally of NFTS, which hit a record in sales of about $900 million (€761 million).

Solana has also focused on DeFi (decentralised finance) projects, which cuts out financial institutions and intermediaries and executes financial transactions over the blockchain in recent months.

What is Solana doing differently?

Solana has prioritised smart contracts, which are programmes stored on the blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met and automate agreements so that everyone is certain of the outcome. They cut out any intermediary and speed up the process.

This has allowed Solana to take advantage of the NFT market and DeFi.

But other cryptos such as Cardano are also planning to enter the smart contract space, so there will likely be increased competition.

Solana also uses the proof-of-history (PoH) consensus, which means that messages are grouped together so that there is proof and a record of the time of each message. The concept allows for greater scalability and trust on the blockchain.

One of the network’s other main promises is that its users will not be surprised with increased taxes and fees.

Solana logo GETTY VIA CANVA

Traders have also been speculating on a possible new feature Solana is set to launch in early September but little is known on what the feature could be.

Is Solana a rival for Bitcoin and Ethereum?

According to crypto investment company CoinShares, Solana has picked up more than $7 million (almost €6 million) in investment over the past week. Whereas Bitcoin saw a loss of $2.8 million (€2.3 million) in investment. But Solana is unlikely to knock Bitcoin from the top spot anytime soon.

Solana is seen more as a rival to Ethereum as the tech is cheaper and claims to offer a faster transaction speed, at 50,000 transactions per second.

Are there any threats to Solana?

As more blockchains begin to use smart contracts and move into NFTs, Solana will face more competition in the space it has carved for itself.

But there is another threat. Crypto regulations in China saw Solana’s price fall 60 per cent this summer amid the crypto market crash.

The United States is also investigating the cryptocurrency market, which could pose another threat to the values of all tokens.

5 Reasons Why Solana (SOL) Keeps Climbing

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Solana (SOL) is on a tear at the moment, hitting all-time high after all-time high. The price increased over 200% in August and is up over 7,000% since the start of the year, according to data from CoinGecko.

This pushed Solana into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap. At the time of writing, Solana, which is available at most top cryptocurrency exchanges, sits in eighth place.

When the price of a cryptocurrency rises so quickly, it’s always difficult to know whether we’re about to see an equally dramatic fall. Understanding why the price has jumped is one way to gauge how sustainable that growth is. Here are some reasons for Solana’s growth.

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  1. Solana’s move into NFTs with Degenerate Apes

You’ve probably heard of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – digital collectibles that continue to take the crypto world by storm. By coding ownership and copyright information into these tokens, key data is essentially baked into each piece of digital art.

Degenerate Apes was Solana’s first big foray into NFTs. This collection of costumed apes features various traits – from glasses to sandwiches – with various degrees of rarity. The launch had some technical issues (the team tweeted that they’d been “overwhelmed” by the demand), but that didn’t matter. The collection of 10,000 apes sold out in less than 10 minutes. At the time of writing, the trading volume had reached over 600,000 SOL (over $66 million). Those sales all needed SOL, which is a big factor in the price increase.

  1. It’s attracting a wide range of projects – and some of them are doing well

There are over 400 projects built on Solana’s network, including various decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Decentralized finance is an umbrella term for a host of projects that take the middleman (often banks) out of financial transactions.

FTX and Alameda Research built their decentralized cryptocurrency exchange called Serum on the network, which also hosts the increasingly popular USDC stablecoin. (USDC is also available on Ethereum.) Another of this month’s crypto stars, Audius (AUDIO), uses the platform too, which may also be a factor behind Solana’s price rise. Plus, TikTok chose Audius as its streaming partner earlier this month.

  1. People are looking for alternatives to Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum was the first programmable blockchain – a blockchain that can host other applications and cryptocurrencies – and many cryptos have since followed in its footsteps. The majority of applications are still built on Ethereum, but the network is struggling with congestion and high fees. As a result, both developers and investors are looking for alternatives.

Solana is one of a number of programmable blockchains that are jostling for pole position. People talk about potential Ethereum killers, but it’s more likely Ethereum will be one of five or six leaders that emerge in the coming years. If Solana continues to perform well, there’s a good chance it could win a spot in that top tier.

  1. It successfully launched a wormhole project

Wormholes may sound like something out of Star Trek, but for Solana, this wormhole offers a way to easily bridge between different networks. Right now, blockchains are not very good at working with one another, and that’s been another stumbling block in terms of growth. It would be like having two wireless providers that couldn’t communicate with one another.

According to Coindesk, projects can now use the wormhole to move assets between Ethereum and Solana quickly and cheaply. Solana says the next step will be to connect Terra (LUNA) and the Binance Smart Chain.

  1. It’s fast

Solana is one of the fastest cryptos on the block right now. It claims it can process at least 50,000 transactions per second (TPS) at a cost of less than $0.01 per transaction. Not only is this competitive with Visa’s payment processing capabilities, but Solana says it will be able to get faster as hardware improves – potentially reaching 700,000 TPS. To give you some context, Ethereum processes 15 to 45 TPS, though it will get faster as it completes an upgrade to Eth2.

Speed is not everything, but it has been an obstacle for many evolving cryptocurrencies. Time will tell whether Solana’s correct in saying it hasn’t compromised on security or other factors to reach that speed. Assuming it is, Solana may be able to keep its position in the top 10 cryptos for some time to come.

Potential threats to Solana’s price

It’s worth noting that there are some clouds on the horizon. U.S. authorities are talking about stricter DeFi regulation, which could have an impact on a number of projects on Solana’s platform. In addition, cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile investments that could see heavy losses as well as dramatic gains.

As previously mentioned, the programmable blockchain space is extremely competitive, and several strong Ethereum alternatives are in the running. Nonetheless, it’s fair to say that there are some solid reasons for Solana’s extraordinary month.

$SOL Jumps to Top 10 Cryptocurrency Spot as $DOT Drops from the List

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(Photo : Image from Solana Website) $SOL Jumps to Top 10 Cryptocurrency Spot as $DOT Drops from the List

$SOL or Solana wasn’t really that well known as the cryptocurrency only started about 18 months ago. As of the moment, however, it jumped to the top 10 cryptocurrency list with $DOT dropping out.

Solana Top 10 Cryptocurrency

According to an article by Forbes, a trader Jonas Luethy stated that Solana, a popular altcoin, has just reaffirmed its status as a strong outliner in the market. Solana has taken a spot on the top 10 cryptocurrency list.

Luethy then pointed to the booming popularity of NFTs nowadays, like NFT games and other blockchain-based digital art collectibles that are starting to gain traction even among celebrities. Luethy points to this as the catalyst behind Solana’s huge spike.

NFT Projects Start to Pop

Luethy noted that NFT sales in August have reportedly hit a massive $900 million, which is already triple the amount of their best performing month, May, 2021. Over the weekend, Solana also hit yet another milestone: the value of decentralized financial projects, which have just caught the eye of regulators.

This pinned the token’s blockchain to surpass $3 billion for the very first time ever. This would nearly triple the value of $SOL this month alone! Despite the value of the much broader crypto market being virtually flat during the past week, Solana has been able to achieve massive growth.

While $ADA has just recently gained immense attention spiking with a massive growth over the last few days, almost similar has happened to $SOL. The difference is, Solana has reached a massive +232.5% growth in the past 30 days!

Check out the Top 10 Cryptocurrency Changes in the Last 30 Days:

  1. $SOL

Price: $119.80

24 hour percentage change: +19.4%

7 day percentage change: +55%

30 day percentage change: +232.5%

  1. $ADA

Price: $2.82

24 hour percentage change: -0.6%

7 day percentage change: -3.0%

30 day percentage change: +102.7%

  1. $HEX

Price: $0.24

24 hour percentage change: +10.0%

7 day percentage change: +36.9%

30 day percentage change: +92.7%

  1. $XRP

Price: $1.14

24 hour percentage change: -0.2%

7 day percentage change: -9.5%

30 day percentage change: +45.6%

  1. $BNB

Price: $468.57

24 hour percentage change: -2.1%

7 day percentage change: -5.6%

30 day percentage change: +34.2%

  1. $DOGE

Price: $0.28

24 hour percentage change: -1.4%

7 day percentage change: -12.0%

30 day percentage change: +28.7%

  1. $ETH

Price: $3,350

24 hour percentage change: +5.2%

7 day percentage change: +0.1%

30 day percentage change: +25.1%

  1. $BTC

Price: $47,809

24 hour percentage change: -0.4%

7 day percentage change: -3.9%

30 day percentage change: +13.4%

  1. $USDC

Price: $1.00

24 hour percentage change: +0.1%

7 day percentage change: +0.1%

30 day percentage change: -0.1%

  1. $USDT

Price: $1.00

24 hour percentage change: -0.1%

7 day percentage change: -0.1%

30 day percentage change: -0.2%

Read Also: Fiancé Gets Mad at Man for Proposing to Her with NFT Instead of Ring | Man Lost Half of Savings on Dogecoin

The updates above were taken from WhaleBot Alerts on Telegram, showing that the top Binance trader positions for $XRP are 84.87% long and 15.13% short. The question as of the moment is if Solana lives up to the promises of its website, noting the coin will provide a smoother and faster blockchain experience.

Related Article: Crypto Whale ‘Mr. Whale’ Warns of Tether and USDC Halting Prints | Advises Hodlers to Take Profits and ‘Mute Those Moon Boys’

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Written by Urian B.

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