Solana’s native token SOL approached $100 early on Friday, driven by fast transactions, low fees on the blockchain, and the ongoing excitement of a meme coin lottery that has been going on for the third week.
Metrics suggest that Solana is likely the most attention-grabbing project among traders, with transaction volumes surpassing Ethereum‘s when looking at seven-day intervals and considering changes in network fees.
Solana’s Blast from the Past
Solana’s (SOL) Total Value Locked (TVL) has also increased in parallel. It rose from a level of $400 million in November to $1.3 billion, a point close to levels last seen in July 2022.
These factors have paved the way for SOL’s gains to soar over 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 amid significant selling pressure from the bankruptcy of the FTX exchange, which owned billions of dollars in SOL. As of writing, Solana (SOL) is trading at $93.28.
Solana and Memecoins
Solana’s ecosystem 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 with very small investments. This altcoin quickly led to some early investors realizing gains of over 10,000%.
Data emerging during this period showed that since then, dozens of new memecoins have been added to the ecosystem by new developers. Many of these have risen from very low market values to several million.
Meanwhile, some analysts continue to suggest that SOL’s strong performance may continue in the coming weeks.
Solana is recovering more steadily than most of its major competitors and is garnering more interest in the community, promising to maintain its performance above the market in the coming months.
FxPro senior market analyst Alex Kuptsikevich said:
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 made to Solana users in the past weeks.
The Solana blockchain continues to grow strongly with the backdrop of new protocols and related airdrops.
