Solana Reclaims $30 Despite Sluggish Quarter, NFT Sales Soar ⋆ ZyCrypto

After weeks in the doldrums, Solana finally swung higher Tuesday alongside major altcoins, managing to recapture and hold atop the $30 threshold through to Wednesday.

Solana’s relief rally comes against the backdrop of discouraging macroeconomics ravaging the entire cryptocurrency market in the past seven months. After tapping an all-time high of $260 in November 2021, Solana embarked on a sustained drawdown, shedding as much as 87.95%.

Apart from being a victim of the market’s general weakness, the Solana network has been experiencing a series of outages which has been a significant concern for its users. Since it launched in 2020, the proof-of-stake hybrid blockchain has been hit by five major outages, with three of them coming out this year alone.

And whereas the network developers continue to assure users that a long-term solution to those problems is on the horizon, that seems not to be forthcoming, with the latest outage coming as recently as September 30. According to data from DeFiLlama, the Total Value Locked (TVL) in the Solana ecosystem has plunged from $10.17 billion in November 2021 to $934.55 million.

Developers seem to have also slowed down their activities since March, with a sizeable number of crypto adherents losing interest in the network social as depicted by the Development Activity and Social Volume metrics from Glassnode.

Solana NFTs Picking Up

Nevertheless, despite the discouraging fundamentals, Solana NFTs have been quietly heating up. According to on-chain data analytics firm CryptoSlam, the sale of Solana-based NFTs almost doubled last month, climbing from just 71.4 million in August to $129.9 million in September thanks to the launch of some high-profile NFT collections like the “y00ts”. Solana’s debut on the world’s largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, in July, has also played a significant role in the recent upsurge.

In the past year, the Solana ecosystem has also built a more significant presence, with Coinbase joining the likes of Binance by unveiling a Solana staking service in June. Given the extreme crypto market volatility, staking has become one of the most sought-after alternatives.

Unlike Ethereum, where users need to lock up at least 32 ETH to run a validator node, there is no limit on how much one can stake with Solana. Plenty of popular third-party services, such as Lido Finance, help users stake SOL and easily earn rewards. 

Is Solana Ripe for a BUY?

Whereas it’s hard to tell whether Solana’s bottom is in, the crypto-assets price seems to be headed towards the $40 resistance after bouncing off monthly support at $27 on Friday.

It broke and closed above the $30 resistance on Tuesday, signifying bullish strength. By Thursday noon, the so-called “Ethereum killer” was trading at about $31.30, up over 10% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data.