The native token for a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on Solana (SOL) has skyrocketed by more than 95% this week amid roaring network growth. Raydium (RAY) is an on-chain order book automated market maker (AMM). The project’s native token, RAY, is trading at $1.72 at time of writing, up from around $0.88 one week ago. […]
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SOL price has started to cool off as investors potentially question the reasons for the most recent double-digit rally.
Solana (SOL) experienced a notable 36.6% increase in value between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. However, SOL’s failure to breach the $44.50 mark resulted in a 10% correction down to $40 on Nov. 6. This movement has left many investors pondering whether the ecosystem growth and network activity support Solana’s present $16.9 billion market capitalization.
Solana's peak at $44.50 on Nov. 2 was the highest it had reached since August 2022, and coincided with the Solana Breakpoint 2023 global conference held in Amsterdam. The price hype during this period even prompted BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes to admit to being a "degen" and invest in SOL, despite referring to the token as "just a meme."
During the Breakpoint conference, the Solana Foundation unveiled the testnet launch of Firedancer, a new client aimed at enhancing speed, reliability, and reducing hardware requirements for validators, addressing a longstanding criticism of this layer-1 blockchain that offers parallel computing for smart contracts.
Additionally, on Oct. 31, the Solana Foundation announced the availability of its network dataset on Google Cloud BigQuery, a serverless data warehouse solution with built-in machine learning and artificial intelligence. This enables developers and companies to access archival data and analytical insights transparently and securely.
On the development front, the Solana Foundation has maintained a consistent level of activity. This includes the approval by validators in September of the v.1.16 update, which introduced confidential transactions for SPL tokens on the Solana network using zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs.
However, not all news has been positive for Solana despite its token's price performance. For example, on Oct. 17, the decentralized liquid staking protocol, Lido Finance, announced its decision to cease operations on the network, citing unsustainable financials and low fees, which led to a community vote sealing the service's termination.
The central question that lingers is whether the on-chain activity and metrics related to decentralized applications (DApps) support the SOL price hike. Thus, one should analyze how Solana's on-chain data and ecosystem growth compares to its competitors.
Solana's primary DApp metric began showing weakness in September as the network's total value locked (TVL), measuring the amount deposited in its smart contracts, reached its lowest levels in over 2 years on Nov. 5.
Notably, Solana's DApp deposits experienced a 30% decrease in 30 days at 9.83 million SOL. As a point of comparison, Ethereum's TVL in ETH declined by 2% during the same period, while BNB Chain saw an 8% decrease in BNB terms.
Furthermore, Solana's low fees and continued development after the FTX-Alameda Research collapse have not necessarily translated into a large number of active users. Solana's largest decentralized exchange (DEX), Raydium, recorded only 17,380 active addresses in the past 30 days. Similarly, Solana's most widely used game, Star Atlas, had 12,420 unique addresses during the same period.
In contrast, BNB Chain's DEX, PancakeSwap, boasted 513,060 active addresses in the last 30 days, and its Stargate game had 106,400 users. Meanwhile, Avalanche's DEX, Trader Joe, garnered 54,130 active addresses, and its leading game, Galxe, had 32,040 unique addresses.
Perhaps more concerning is the fact that Solana's DApps' volume reached $609 million in the last 30 days, as reported by DappRadar. This number pales in comparison to BNB Chain's $11 billion, Polygon's $5.3 billion, and Avalanche's $727 million in DApps volume.
In addition to these issues, criticism has arisen regarding the need for Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements to become a network validator, as highlighted by user StakeWithPride on a social network.
Related: Multichain inside job? And SOL surges 80% in a month - Finance Redefined
To add to the concerns, X social network user arixoneth revealed that out of 1,997 validators, 1,818 received delegations from the Solana Foundation or Alameda, accounting for nearly 90% of all validators.
2/ I wrote a script to get precise numbers and here is what I got:
— arixon.eth (@arixoneth) October 3, 2023
Out of 1997 validators 1818 received delegations from the foundation & Alameda.
In total they have delegated 106M SOL, 73M from the foundation and 33M from Alameda. pic.twitter.com/Il3eyabeZ8
These participants effectively delegated 106 million SOL from these two entities, raising questions about centralization and dissatisfaction among SOL token holders, both concerning the validators and development subsidies as well as the comparatively small DApps user base in relation to other networks. Ultimately, Solana’s on-chain activity contradicts the recent price surge and does not support further price increases.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
The founder of Ethereum (ETH) is offering words of encouragement to the developers of rival smart contract platform Solana (SOL) as its bear market struggles continue. The former billionaire says that since the “awful opportunistic money” has been washed out of Solana, the blockchain’s future looks bright and he hopes they thrive from here on […]
The post Ethereum (ETH) Founder Vitalik Buterin Offers Support for Solana Developers As SOL Stumbles Into 2023 appeared first on The Daily Hodl.
Smart contract platform Solana (SOL) and other digital assets associated with it continue to freefall as a crypto exchange platform announces it’s going to delist them. According to crypto reporter Colin Wu, crypto exchange Matrixport will delist SOL and its accompanying digital assets starting December 30th, a move that sent the already-ailing cryptocurrencies on another […]
The post Solana and Associated Tokens Down Over 96% From All-Time Highs As SOL Gets Delisted From Crypto Exchange appeared first on The Daily Hodl.
A hacker just exploited the Solana (SOL)-based automated market maker (AMM) Raydium (RAY) for more than $4.3 million in crypto. Raydium first acknowledged the hack on Twitter on Friday morning. “An exploit on Raydium is being investigated that affected liquidity pools. Details to follow as more is known. Initial understanding is owner authority was overtaken […]
The post Hacker Exploits Solana-Based Project Raydium for Over $4,300,000 As the Protocol’s Native Token Slumps appeared first on The Daily Hodl.
Cryptocurrencies understood to have exposure to Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX, and Alameda Research appear to have been impacted the most.
The total value locked (TVL) on the Solana chain has plummeted 32.4% in the last 24 hours, as news stemming from the collapse of FTX has sent waves through the crypto ecosystem.
According to DefiLlama, at the time of writing, Solana’s TVL has fallen to $423.68 million, down 32.4% in the last 24 hours, a far cry from its all-time-high (ATH) of $10.17 billion on Nov. 9, 2021.
TVL measures the total value of all assets locked into DeFi protocols. As TVL increases that means more coins are deposited within the DeFi protocols, and can indicate bullish sentiment, while a falling TVL shows that investors are pulling their funds out of the ecosystem for one reason or another.
The fall in TVL went as far as a 51.7% decline over 24 hours, however, but slightly corrected leading up to the writing of this article.
The Solana-based liquid staking protocol Marinade Finance has seen the biggest loss in TVL on the chain, having fallen 35.1% to $115.79 million within the last 24 hours.
Other major protocols on Solana have seen similar decreases over the last 24 hours, with automated market maker Raydium down 34.25%, liquid staking protocol Lido down 43.13% and lending protocol Solend down 63.07%.
Other leading blockchains have also seen decreases in TVL over the same time period, with Ethereum down 10.59%, Binance smart chain (BSC) down 9.68%, and Tron down 8.84%.
Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder of FTX and crypto hedge fund Alameda Research, had been an early investor in Solana though Alameda Research and cryptocurrencies exposed to SBF’s companies have been the hardest hit by the fallout.
Solana’s token (SOL), has also dropped heavily compared to its competitors, with the price falling 40.53% to $13.38 over the last 24 hours.
The token had briefly risen after news that Binance might end up acquiring FTX, but dropped after Binance backed out of the deal citing allegations of consumer funds being mishandled and an investigation from regulators.
Related: Solana’s co-founder addresses the blockchain’s reliability at Breakpoint
Despite the recent challenges facing SOL, co-founder of Solana Labs Anatoly Yakovenko has reiterated his bullish stance on the network despite recent losses.
He pointed to the quality of builders and recent network-level improvements as big positives in a Nov. 9 tweet.
1/ I said this on stage at Breakpoint just a few days ago – the builders on Solana are second to none, and the projects they're building can often only be built on Solana.
— toly (@aeyakovenko) November 9, 2022
Throughout Solana’s annual conference, a range of announcements were made including a partnership with Google Cloud, the launch of the Solana App Store, and an upcoming smartphone.
Top US-based crypto exchange platform Coinbase is adding three altcoin projects to its listing roadmap. Coinbase’s listing roadmap is a set of crypto projects that are on the path of possibly joining the exchange’s roster of supported assets. In a new announcement, Coinbase says it has updated its roadmap with the addition of Gnosis (GNO), […]
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SOL price is more than 60% away from its all-time high and data shows that it's not the network outages but the loss of territory to competing chains driving the correction.
The past couple of months have not been kind to cryptocurrencies. The sector's aggregate market capitalization plunged 50% from a Nov. 10 peak at $2.87 trillion to the current $1.44 trillion. Solana's (SOL) downfall has been even more brutal, presently trading at $88 after a 66% correction since its $260 all-time-high.
Pinning the underperformance exclusively to the recent network outages seems too simplistic, and it doesn't explain why the accelerated decoupling over the past week, so let's take a look at what might be going on.
The Solana network suffered four incidents in the span of a few months. According to the project's developers, a sudden spike in the number of computing transactions caused network congestion which crippled the network.
Interestingly, the network struggles with congestion since the developers advertise a 50,000 transaction per second (TPS) capacity. The latest incident on Jan. 7 has been attributed to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, but data shows us that network attacks are less relevant than dApps use.
Cyber Capital chief investment officer Justin Bons criticized the network's security, mentioning that DDoS can be used to "temporarily gain proportional-staked control over the network by attacking other stakeholders."
Sergey Zhdanov, chief operating officer of crypto exchange EXMO UK, also said DDoS attacks and similar outages "don't really influence the trust of the network" and should be disregarded. Zhdanov makes a point comparing Ethereum network fees surpassing $50 as a similar hiccup, but not significant enough to cause investors to abandon it for good.
Solana's main decentralized application metric started to display weakness earlier in November after the network's total value locked (TVL), which measures the amount deposited in its smart contracts, began to linger at $15 billion.
Notice how Solana's dApp deposits saw a 44% decrease in 3 months, as the indicator reached its lowest level since Sept. 8. As a comparison, Fantom's TVL currently stands at $9.5 billion, a 79% increase in 3 months. Another dApp scaling solution competitor, Terra, saw a 60% TVL hike to $16 billion.
Not even the $10 million raised by Solana's decentralized finance (DeFi) application Hubble Protocol in early January was enough to recover investors' confidence. Crypto heavyweights like Three Arrows, Digital Currency Group, Delphi Digital and Crypto.com Capital backed the launch of the crypto-backed stablecoin and zero-interest borrowing platform.
Total value locked is no longer the primary metric that reflects strong fundamentals, meaning a 66% price correction has other factors at play than just a reduced TVL. To confirm whether dApps use has effectively decreased, investors should also analyze the number of active addresses within the ecosystem.
As shown by DappRadar data on Jan. 28, the number of Solana network addresses interacting with most decentralized applications dropped by 18% to 32%, except for the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Magic Eden.
The lesser interest on Solana dApps was also reflected in its futures open interest, which peaked at $2 billion on Nov. 6, but recently faced a steep correction.
The above chart shows how derivatives traders' interest in Solana plunged 75% in less than 3 months. That is especially concerning because a smaller number of futures contracts might reduce the activity of arbitrage desks and market makers. For example, it is common for participants to self-limit their exposure to 20% of the asset volume or open interest.
It's probably impossible to pinpoint the correlation and causation between SOL's price drop, the decrease in the network's dApps use, and the fading interest from derivatives traders. However, none of those indicators point to a price recovery anytime soon.
The data above suggests that Solana holders should be less concerned about momentary outages and focus on the ecosystem's use versus competing chains. As long as the ecosystem remains healthy, investors have no reason to lose trust due to temporary network outages.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.
