Solana (COIN: $SOL) is an innovative and high-performance blockchain network that is designed for cryptocurrency projects and decentralized applications (DApps). $SOL has recently become the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, surpassing both $BNB and $XRP. The market cap has surged 1.67% in the last 24 hours, reaching an impressive $42.3 billion.
We have previously discussed the Solana surge at the start of December, when it broke the $70 mark. Currently, the coin is on the verge of hitting the $100 mark. At the time of writing, the token was trading at $96.07, with a 1.28% increase in the last 24 hours.
The current bullish trend aligns with the broader market trajectory, as Solana has witnessed a remarkable 876% surge since the beginning of the year, marked by a substantial five-fold increase in the last two months.
Despite an excellent market cap, Solana’s 24-hour volume dropped by 54.33%, reaching a value of $2.7 billion. The project surpassed $6 billion in 24-hour volume on Friday.
These impressive metrics emphasize SOL’s growing interest and confidence among investors and traders. The value locked in Solana applications exhibited a concurrent increase, surging from the $400 million mark in November to $1.3 billion worth of tokens. This rise brought the levels back to those observed in July 2022.
Furthermore, the $SOL value has increased massively since the start of 2023, surging by 715.89%.
Users’ Interest in Solana has Skyrocketed
According to the Block, “Solana” on Google searches soared up to 250% in the last two months. According to the research analyst, Rebecca Stevens of the Block, “Its price performance has been a lot stronger than other assets which has likely been pulling in more interest, and more recently meme coins on the network have also been taking off”.
Moreover, Solana is much cheaper and faster than Ethereum. Solana has positioned itself as the primary contender to Ethereum, drawing in users and developers to its ecosystem by presenting an alternative to Ethereum’s infamously high gas fees.
Is Firedancer the Reason Behind Impressive 2023 Performance?
A little more than a year ago, the prices of SOL plummeted by more than 50% in the wake of the insolvency of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency exchange in November 2022.
The development of Firedancer on the Solana network has played a key role in surging the price of the token. The Firedancer, a third-party software and a next-generation validation client, is designed and developed by Jump Crypto. It is Solana’s only current client providing an alternative to Solana labs. Furthermore, the ideal aim behind this is to boost the scalability and speed of the Solana blockchain. In a demo testing in November 2022, Firedancer produced up to 1.2 million TPS (transaction per second), far ahead of Solana’s current TPS. It will also decrease the operating cost for Solana nodes, as it is designed to improve the platform’s efficiency.
The official announcement of the client’s production release is pending, but initial demonstrations suggest that it will bring redundancy and performance enhancements to Solana’s network.
[Click The Chart Above To View The Solana Price-Action On TradingView]
Should you Invest in Solana ($SOL)?
Solana has a great roadmap and innovation for the future. As Firedancer is set to be launched on the network, there is huge buzz amongst users of the platform and investors alike. Solana has recently become the 4th largest crypto by market cap. This achievement is attributed to several factors, including a surge in Solana Mobile purchases, substantial trading volumes associated with $BONK, and a prevailing bullish sentiment within the Solana ecosystem. As Solana continues to disrupt the crypto landscape, the industry eagerly watches its trajectory in the coming days.
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