Data provided by Paris-based crypto research firm Kaiko reveals an important detail behind the significant increase in Solana’s SOL, which has risen over 50% in the past two weeks and nearly 70% in the past month. The data shows that the US-based major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is a significant source of growth for the altcoin.
Since October 25, the cumulative volume delta (CVD) of SOL has increased by approximately $1 million on Coinbase, indicating a net capital inflow. While CVD turned positive on Binance and Kraken earlier this week, it has been negative and declining on South Korea-based cryptocurrency exchange Upbit for the past two weeks.
The CVD metric shows the net difference between buying and selling volumes over time. It represents the total of bullish/bearish pressures in the market, with positive values indicating an excess of buying volume and negative values indicating a shortage of buying volume.
According to Kaiko analyst Riyad Carey, the median order size on Coinbase is much higher than other cryptocurrency exchanges. This is considered as a sign that institutional investors are more interested in buying SOL through Coinbase than individual investors.
Coinbase’s leadership in the SOL market comes after the asset management firm VanEck published a report detailing a bullish scenario that could push the price of the altcoin up to $3,200 by 2030. VanEck’s rise prediction is based on a scenario where Solana becomes the first blockchain hosting applications with over 100 million users.
However, the recent price increases of SOL have not yet been able to stimulate on-chain activity as expected. According to DefiLlama, the total value of locked assets in Solana-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols has dropped from 12.03 million SOL to 10.23 million SOL in the past two weeks, reaching the lowest level since April 2021. Although TVL is a problematic measure, it is widely followed to gauge the usage of smart contracts.
On-chain analyst Patrick Scott noted that the volume on Solana-based decentralized exchanges (DEX) and the number of active wallet addresses on the network have increased on his personal X account, but these increases are not sufficient to support the price increase.