Solana's Stellar Month: Nearing $70 As Top Layer-1 Crypto, Surpassing Ethereum And Bitcoin

Solana SOL/USD has emerged as one of the top gainers among Layer-1 (or base) blockchains, up over 80% in the past month. Other top-performing Layer-1 cryptos in the past month include Avalanche AVAX/USD up 82%, Cardano ADA/USD up 28%, and Tron TRX/USD which gained 8%.

In contrast, during the same period, Ethereum ETH/USD, a competing Layer-1 token, experienced an increase of 12%. Meanwhile, Bitcoin, which surpassed the $38,000 mark within the past week, recorded a 9% increase over the past month.

Read More: Avalanche Or Solana, Which Of These Ethereum Killers Has Given Superior Returns This Year

What Happened: With a sixth rank in top cryptocurrencies, Solana’s market cap has seen an expansion of 3.9% while trading volume in the past 24 hours saw a surge of 81%. Based on DefiLlama data, Solana's total value locked stood at $653.71 million marking a 7.5% change in the past 24 hours. This is in comparison to the $149 million TVL reported in March 2021.

The Layer-1 blockchain boasts a fast speed and affordable cost platform, and it combines the Proof-of-History (PoH) consensus mechanism alongside the more common Proof-of-Stake. Solana is currently able to process 3,111 transactions per second with a block time of 400 milliseconds.

Active addresses in the past 24 hours stand at 163,872 with 39.42 million transactions. Overall, the blockchain reports 11.5 million active accounts.

In the past 30 days, SOL has seen a 70% surge taking its past year gains to 340% while Avalanche, Cardano, and Tron report past year gains of 68%, 25%, and 93% respectively.

Why Does It Matter: In late October, Solana Foundation Executive Director Dan Albert announced the testnet launch of Firedancer, which Web3 development firm Jump Crypto has been building since August 2022. It is a new validator that will push Solana’s throughput to a significant one million transactions per second. Its scheduled mainnet launch is in 1H24.

Solana emerged as the pick for Visa’s revolutionizing cross-border payments project in September 2023 and Shopify in August 2023 introduced Solana Pay making it a new payment option on the platform.

Also, ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood stated “Solana is doing a really good job. Ether was faster and cheaper than Bitcoin [back] in the day — that’s how we got Ether. Solana is even faster and [more] cost-effective than Ether.”

The digital asset investments sector experienced significant inflows of $346 million, taking it to the largest weekly inflows for the ninth consecutive week. Solana's inflows stood at $3.5 million.

Could Solana breach the $70 mark soon? If that happens, it will be the first time SOL has been back to that price level since May 2022. 

Read Next: If You Invested $1,000 In Solana When Sam Bankman-Fried Was Arrested, Here's How Much You'd Have Today

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