Why Is the Price of Solana (SOL) up Today?

The price of smart contract platform Solana (SOL) is up by more than 7% so far today, significantly outperforming other leading digital assets, with Bitcoin’s price dropping 0.5% over the same period and ETH dropping by 0.6%.

The price of Solana is up nearly 800% so far this year, and more than 400% over the past six months as it recovers from the collapse of the FTX exchange, which before collapsing was a heavy supporter of the network’s ecosystem and invested in a number of tokens on the network, including SOL.

SOLUSD Chart via TradingView

The collapse affected Solana by association, but the network has been steadily recovering to now have over $1.2 billion in total value locked (TVL) on its decentralized finance ecosystem, up from $230 million at the beginning of the year.

Most of those gains, however, were supported by SOL’s price rise, as in SOL terms total value locked moved from little over 10 million SOL to around 14.89 million at the time of writing.

According to available data, the total amount of users on Solana’s DeFi ecosystem is now above the 200,000 mark, while its non-fungible token (NFT) saves have recently seen their volume spike above those on Ethereum.

Moreover, the cryptocurrency’s price has been going up amid a wave of fear of missing out (FOMO), as according to cryptocurrency analytics firm Solana, along with Stacks and NEAR Protocol, is among the top trending assets by rising social volumes.

Recently, Solana’s performance saw it surpass XRP in terms of market capitalization, allowing it to become the fifth-largest digital asset by the metric, behind Binance’s BNB, USDT, Ethereum, and Bitcoin.

Solana’s ecosystem has been seeing growing adoption, with its Saga smartphone, which once faced sluggish sales, selling out recently over a lucrative 30 million BONK token airdrop for each new owner of the phone.

At its high, the airdrop was estimated to be worth more than the smartphone’s $599 price tag, meaning users could get their hands on a new smartphone and still make a profit off of just the airdrop.

Analysts believe SOL’s price may keep on rising, however, with a popular cryptocurrency strategist who has gained a large following on social media after accurately calling Bitcoin’s 2018 bear market bottom above $3,000 predicting a major surge for it in the near future.

Featured image via Unsplash.

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