Solana’s SOL Breaks All-Time High as Ecosystem Comes Together

The Solana blockchain’s SOL token is soaring to an all-time high, climbing the ranks to become the tenth largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization.

SOL rallied as much as 38.8 % to $68.24 today, the highest ever. The digital asset is up 3,441.9% this year, compared with 353.3% for ETH and 58% for BTC.

People are searching for a catalyst.

“I wonder if Grayscale or something big was what kicked this off,” said a user on the cryptocurrency’s Reddit. Another asked whether the pump was due to an NFT project on Solana. This may be the truth as people realize it’s easier, cheaper and faster to mint NFTs on Solana, prop trader Jeffrey Scott told The Defiant. “It’s possible this is the start of a trend similar to ETH and ICOs in 2017 which caused a massive demand for the coin,” Scott said.

The Whole SOL Ecosystem

And it’s not just SOL — other Solana-based tokens are rallying too. Music streaming protocol Audius, which has the largest market capitalization at $989M of any Solana-based project, is up 65.6% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Other Solana DeFi projects with $300M-plus market capitalizations have been pumping too. The automated market maker Raydium is up 10.3%, prime brokerage protocol Oxygen is up 7.4%, and decentralized exchange Serum is up12.3%.

Smaller cap projects based on the Solana blockchain have been doing well too. In the last seven days, eight out of the top ten movers had triple-digit gains, according to Solana Daily on Twitter. The largest increase belongs to SolAPE Finance, a decentralized exchange whose SOLAPE token is up 18.9%, according to CoinGecko, at the time of writing.

Solana is getting in on the NFT action as well. Degenerate Ape Academy sold out their NFT drop in eight minutes over the weekend according to the project’s Twitter account. There are 3226 Degenerate Apes listed on the NFT marketplace with a floor price of 13 SOL, worth $818.09 at the time of writing.

Speed and Scale

Solana is a blockchain built for speed and scale. The project’s website says it can process 50K transactions per second charging $0.00025 for each. As Ethereum averages about 15 transactions per second and the median cost for a transaction is $3.97, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard, the enthusiasm for blockchain-based apps may be overflowing to a cheaper chain.

Elsewhere in crypto, other so-called Ethereum killers, or blockchains that may be considered competitive to Ethereum as Layer 1 settlement layers, are also rising. Fantom, Terra, Kusama and Avalanche are among the top 10 gainers of the day.