Solana’s native token SOL approached $100 early on Friday, driven by the network’s fast transactions, low fees, and the ongoing excitement of a meme coin lottery that has continued into its third week.
Metrics suggest that Solana is likely the most attention-grabbing project among traders, with its transaction volumes surpassing Ethereum‘s when considering the changes in network fees over seven-day periods.
A Blast from the Past for Solana
Solana’s (SOL) Total Value Locked (TVL) has also increased in parallel, rising from a level of $400 million in November to $1.3 billion. This level is close to the highs last seen in July 2022.
These factors have paved the way for SOL’s price gains to exceed 830% since the beginning of 2023. Most importantly, much of the growth occurred in just the last two months.
The increase in prices and investor interest in cryptocurrency continues even amidst significant selling pressure due to the bankruptcy of the crypto exchange FTX, which held billions of dollars worth of SOL. Solana (SOL) is trading at $93.28 at the time of writing.
Solana and Memecoins
Solana’s ecosystem’s dog-themed memecoin BONK attracted all the attention with an increase of over 1,000% at the end of November.
This inspired other memecoins like dogwifhat (WIF), which recently made headlines for enabling large gains from small investments. This altcoin quickly led to the emergence of some early investors who gained over 10,000%.
Data emerging in this period shows that since then, dozens of memecoins have been added to the ecosystem by new developers, many of which have risen from a very low market value to several million.
Meanwhile, some analysts continue to suggest that SOL’s strong performance could continue in the coming weeks.
Solana is recovering more steadily than most of its major competitors and promises to maintain above-market performance in the coming months, garnering more interest in the community.
FxPro senior market analyst Alex Kuptsikevich commented:
Google searches for Solana have increased by 250% in the last two months. User interest coincides with the asset’s explosive growth and the rising prices of related memecoins.
Kuptsikevich referred to recent BONK, ACS, and JTO airdrops to Solana users in the past weeks.
The Solana blockchain continues to grow strongly with the backdrop of new protocols and related airdrops.
