SOLANA: Boom time or blip? After plunging in price from over $200 in 2021 to under $10 in 2022, Solana’s SOL token has rebounded above $100 in recent months, making it one of the biggest beneficiaries of the recent cryptocurrency market surge. Solana Blockchain came under fire last cycle due to its close relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried and its uncertain record of network outages. Some saw SOL’s recent price rise as a sign of broader confidence in the ecosystem. This suggests that traders see messy company and performance issues as problems of the past. However, SOL’s gains were greatly accelerated by secondary memes and airdrops, with enthusiasm for several Solana-based tokens driving the hype. The biggest winner was BONK, a meme coin whose price rose more than 200% in the last 30 days. (An interesting side story about the BONK boom is that it was airdropped to owners of Solana phones, which were selling so poorly that people started buying BONK tokens and realizing that for a while they were worth more than the devices themselves. Until then, you could buy this phone .) Other winners include Pyth, a Solana-centric oracle network that recently launched a token. Jito, a liquid staking service that just airdropped JTO tokens, gave some unsuspecting users a huge payday. The Solana network has seen technological improvements over the past few years, but as is often the case in the blockchain world, it remains to be seen whether positive market developments are driven by true adoption of a speed-focused blockchain ecosystem. , or by traders who will soon leave for other active betting.
