The Solana (SOL) ecosystem continues to see huge growth in the market. SOL price touched another record high on Sunday, November 7, as it reached $260.06. Its price is up by almost 17,500% YTD – from $1.51. SOL surpassed Cardano (ADA) and Tether (USDT) to become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $75.4 billion.
Related Reading | Is Cardano Fighting A Losing Battle Against Solana?
At the time of writing, it falls behind Binance Coin (BNB) $109 billion, Ether (ETH) $546 billion, and Bitcoin (BTC) $1.17 trillion. While it is creeping closer to Ethereum, there is still a huge gap between both coins.
Meanwhile, ADA and USDT’s market capitalization came out to be $67.1 billion and $74.4 billion, respectively.
SOL Rises After $100 Million Investment Initiative
Solana’s rise to ATH comes just after its venture capital arm Solana Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and FTX spearheaded a new investment fund dedicated to Web 3 gaming, also known as GameFi. Web 3 gaming has skyrocketed in popularity.
Related Reading | Solana, FTX, Lightspeed Ventures To Launch $100M Web3 Gaming Fund
The venture company intends to increase SOL adoption by attracting desktop and mobile video game developers to build their projects on its public blockchain. With SOL’s bullish run recently, many are comparing it to No. 2 crypto Ethereum.
“Solana is the leading Ethereum competitor,” Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, said to CNBC. “I wouldn’t put all my chips on it, but I’m a big fan.”
SOL trading at $248.7 | Source: SOLUSD on TradingView.com
One of the reasons for this comparison is that both ETH and SOL have smart contract capabilities. Smart contracts are simply programs stored on a blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met. They are important in running decentralized finance applications and non-fungible tokens.
“A lot of the fastest-growing applications of crypto technology have been built on Ethereum and rely on the Ethereum blockchain to function,” Hougan says. “If you’re investing in Solana, you’re betting that its technical sophistication will help it leapfrog Ethereum.”
Solana And NFTs
NFT industry data aggregator CryptoSlam ranks Solana as the fourth-best NFT blockchain behind Ethereum, Ronin, and Wax by 24-hour sales volume. The data shows that Solana saw a record month for secondary NFT sales volume during September with a total of $189.4 million.
Related Reading | Why Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya Invested In The Solana Ecosystem
Secondary sales volume for Solana-based NFTs has reached almost $500 million since the start of August.
The biggest collection of NFTs on the blockchain is the Degen Ape Academy series of ape digital collectibles. So far, the Degenerate Ape Academy has sold ape NFTs worth about 986,300 SOL.
Mason Nystrom, a Messari research analyst, remarked that how quickly the blockchain has grown to be one of the top NFT blockchains in just a few months.
While Solana displays promising metrics in unique addresses (buyers and sellers) and a lower avg NFT sale price, Ethereum still dwarfs Solana in total NFT secondary volumes.
Still, Solana has become one of the top NFT blockchains by secondary trading in mere months. pic.twitter.com/9HfOp7IRut
— Mason Nystrom (@masonnystrom) November 2, 2021
He also noted that as of November 1, Solana’s NFT secondary sales reached $500 million in just three months.
Featured image by CNBC, Chart from TradingView.com