But hold on to your seats, Solana also peaked yesterday, at $60.21. This doesn’t seem as spectacular. However, this was a 144.2% gain during the last 30 days. Who would’ve thought that when we look back at December, and it went below $10?
Blockchains should be accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime.
With less than $0.001 average fees per transaction, Solana ??is ??for ??everyone.#OnlyPossibleOnSolana
Join the movement: https://t.co/nQ0eqevrbLpic.twitter.com/Er2O55J3ho
— Solana (@solana) November 15, 2023
Talking about a resurrection. So, I’m going to take a look at what brought Solana to an ATH of $259 in November 2021. I will also take a look if Solana can repeat this, or even do better.
How Did Solana Get To Its $259 ATH?
So, let’s take a look at how Solana’s current ATH made it to $259.96. First, let me take you back to the mainnet launch. This happened in March 2020. Now, in January 2021, SOL was at $1.52. However, on 6th November it was at its ATH of $259. That’s a 16736% return during that year.
This is due to Solana offering four interesting pillars. Especially for that moment in time:
- High throughput: The platform offered a TPS of 65,000. These are transactions per second. Even with newer and faster chains, that’s still an impressive number. But, let’s stay realistic, most chains don’t even need that high of a TPS in real life. Solana has an average TPS of around 4,000 throughout an hour.
- Low fees: This was a relief after having to deal with the Ethereum fees in 2020 and later years. The Solana fees are a fraction of a penny. They are among the cheapest fees in the crypto space. These fees don’t spike and are consistent. An average fee is 0.000015647 SOL. That’s well under a penny, even at a SOL price of $259.
- Scalability: Solana already uses sharding. Something that Ethereum has been trying to put in place for a few years. Look at sharding as a busy supermarket. If only one cashier is open, there’s a queue, right? But, as soon as the supermarket opens up more cashiers, the queue is gone.
Why build on Solana?
"As a developer, building on Solana right now is super exciting…on Solana you don’t have to wait for some hypothetical future of when blockchains will be performant enough to compete with the existing internet.” –@0xMert_#OnlyPossibleOnSolanapic.twitter.com/Rq99BzylDv
— Solana (@solana) November 16, 2023
Smart Contracts in Solana
Here’s the fourth pillar that Solana offered. Smart contracts. That’s nothing new under the sun in 2023. However, in 2020, it was new that a smart contract chain could be fast and cheap. But that’s precisely what Solana offered. This had an impact on two other spaces, DeFi and NFTs.
- In November 2021, peaked at $10.027 billion. That’s a far cry from where it is today, with $568 million. In other words, leading up to the ATH, Solana’s DeFi was on fire. That’s one of the contributing factors to reaching such a high ATH.
- The Solana NFTs market was thriving as well. launched in October and were 3 SOL each. That’s still $450 at the rates of that time. This was another pillar that made Solana as successful as it was.
So, here we are with the four pillars that put Solana on the map. Now let’s take a look at what caused its fall from grace.
?? Over $1.2 billion USD in is migrating from Ethereum to native SPL on via Wormhole’s secure and seamless native token transfer, as part of @Rendernetwork’s successful upgrade of its DePIN stack to Solana.
Amsterdam vibes ?? yet again @ #Breakpoint2023https://t.co/FPWrRMB5hUpic.twitter.com/QiH7s62dYO
— Wormhole?? (@wormholecrypto) November 2, 2023
The Downfall of Solana
Like all other projects, the blockchain peaked during the last bullrun. Subsequently, it went downhill along with the whole crypto market. However, the moment Solana (SOL) started another parabolic run, LUNA crashed in May 2022. SOL just went from $80 to $136 in only 3 weeks. LUNA stopped that fun in its tracks.
Another blow was the FTX collapse in November of the same year. Shortly after the FTX crash, that’s when SOL dipped under $10. Was this the end of Solana as we knew it? Many thought so. A giant, a former Ethereum killer, was down and out. But this is where Solana showed resilience.
The Resurrection of Solana
This is where the comeback kid makes its appearance. Slowly, but steadily, good things start to happen again. Step by step, Solana brings positive news to the table. For example, Solana’s Breakpoint 2023.
New partnerships like the one with Shopify that integrated with Solana Pay. This brings crypto payments to millions of people around the world. Also, Solana now for USDC settlement.
Then there are Outages. These were a plague for the platform. However, in 2023 there was only one short outage. TVL has started to see a slight increase as well. Solana is also in the 5th spot for active developers of all chains.
All this, and more, affected the SOL price. It reached $67.50, on 16th November. A 144.7% increase over the last 30 days. A stunning 314% over the last year. It took the #6 spot, measured by market cap. Confidence in the platform is back. Providing the project manages to increase its user and developer numbers, it can reach a new ATH with ease. Keep an eye on one of the most resilient chains in this space.
