2021 received off to a fast begin and the present crypto bull market has seen property like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) shoot to new all-time highs on an nearly each day foundation.
Whereas new worth highs are optimistic for buyers, they do current a spread of challenges referring to charges, transaction speeds and the centralization of what’s meant to be a decentralized ecosystem. Since mid-2020 institutional buyers have been steadily flooding into cryptocurrency and that is exacerbating the difficulty of scalability, excessive transaction prices and prolonged affirmation occasions on the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain.
Eth2 is steadily rolling out, however it may nonetheless be a while earlier than customers will profit from its host of latest options. This leaves the door open for different viable candidates to fill the void and a handful of layer 2 initiatives are gaining traction within the decentralized finance area.
One such mission that has been making waves previously 6 months is Solana (SOL). Based by Anatoly Yakovenko and designed a group of former engineers from globally acknowledged firms together with Intel, Dropbox, and Qualcomm, Solana claims to be a censorship-resistant blockchain that gives the open infrastructure required for world adoption.
Some consultants view the mission as a potential Ethereum competitor and FTX change co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried threw his assist behind the mission when he selected it to host his DeFi mission known as Serum.
In response to Bankman-Fried, Ethereum is incapable of dealing with the fast progress seen within the decentralized finance sector and the one manner across the scalability and transaction charge challenges is to construct on different networks like Solana.
Bankman-Fried claims to have totally examined greater than 30 of the highest blockchain initiatives, together with Ethereum, earlier than selecting Solana and previously he referenced the community’s capability to course of 50,000 transactions per second.
When requested about scaling enhancements with Eth2, Bankman-Fried prompt that it’s nonetheless inadequate, saying the crypto sector wants one thing that’s “not simply 100 occasions sooner than Ethereum, we’d like, like, one million occasions sooner than Ethereum.”
Solana token features traction
Initially after itemizing at exchanges, SOL token traded between the $0.50 to $0.91 vary in April and July of 2020. This was earlier than any main mission developments have been introduced however on July 27, Bankman-Fried tweeted:
“Serum is constructed on the @solana blockchain. Solana can course of 10,000 occasions as a lot as Ethereum; and it is 1,000,000 occasions cheaper. And in contrast to many aspect chains, Solana is a fully-fledged, decentralized blockchain with over 100 validators.”

Shortly after the announcement, SOL noticed a noticeable uptick in purchase stress as and over the subsequent two months its quantity and worth surged as the typical each day quantity elevated from $1 million to $41 million and the token worth spiked to $4.89.
Because the DeFi bull run ended and merchants took income, SOL was not spared from the carnage and its worth fell as little as $1.21 earlier than reclaiming the $3.00 vary previously month.
Apart from current as a environment friendly different to the Etheruem community, the Solana blockchain has adopted the footsteps of different networks that understand how integral stablecoins are to the expansion of the crypto sector.
In response to the latest announcement from the OCC that banks “could use new applied sciences, together with INVNs and associated stablecoins, to carry out bank-permissible capabilities, corresponding to cost actions,” the Solana group tweeted that the approval would additionally profit SOL and the community. Twitter feed.
The group stated:
“Huge information for public blockchains & stablecoins! USDC is already built-in on Solana, which is the one chain immediately that may settle 50ok+ txns per second, with charges as little as $0.00001 per txn. Over $50,000,000 in USDC-SPL is presently in circulation!”
The views and opinions expressed listed below are solely these of the writer and don’t essentially mirror the views of Cointelegraph.com. Each funding and buying and selling transfer includes danger, you must conduct your personal analysis when making a call.