22 December 2023
Solana has had one of the best price journeys this year, increasing an outstanding 665% since January. The cryptocurrency has particularly done well in the last quarter of the year, registering price gains that were practically absent for the majority of the year.
This week, SOL flipped BNB to become the 4th largest cryptocurrency and second-largest altcoin by market cap. At this rate, Ethereum’s spot may be next.
Solana’s Impressive Growth
Solana’s price movement this year has been nothing but surprising, and it has no intention of slowing down anytime soon. At the same time, Solana’s blockchain has grown in different metrics. The growth can also be simultaneously linked to various airdrops in Solana-based projects and the Solana Saga Phone which gave out 30 million BONK tokens, a Solana meme coin, for each new owner of the phone. As a result, Solana overtook XRP in market cap rankings for the first time ever, with the latter having a 1.82% price decrease in a 7-day timeframe.
Solana’s native token, SOL, recently reached a yearly high of $99, helping the network to also briefly overtake BNB in terms of market cap. According to data from Coinmarketcap, SOL’s 24-hour trading volume increased by over 33% to over $5.86 billion.
However, Solana has since undergone a price correction and is now trading at $91. On the other hand, BNB’s price growth has been slow this year, with the crypto only registering a 9% gain in the past 365 days.
At the time of writing, BNB is trading at $269, a 22.7% decrease from its yearly high of $348. Solana is now at loggerheads with BNB and it is only a matter of time until it fully overtakes and claims the position of the 2nd largest altcoin.
Can Solana Catch Up With Ethereum?
The question now is whether Solana can catch up to Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain network. While Ethereum still dominates in the DeFi, NFTs, and smart contracts space, Solana is continuing to acquire a growing share of the industry.
In particular, activity on Solana has been on par with Ethereum in the past few weeks, with the chains now rivaling in terms of DEX volume, NFT volumes, active addresses, transaction count, and stablecoin transfers. According to on-chain analytics platform Artemis, total SOL trading volume on decentralized exchanges reached $1.5 billion in the past 24 hours, its highest so far this year.
Solana is currently trading at $91, up by 17% in the past seven days, and is on its way to breaking the $100 price level again. If the current pace of price growth continues, we could see Solana revisiting its current all-time high of $259 in the first half of 2024.
However, Solana still has a long way to go to match Ethereum’s network effects and price. Ethereum’s total market cap currently stands at $278.3 billion, $244 billion more than Solana’s $39.4 billion market cap.