Disclaimer: The information presented does not constitute financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice and is solely the writer’s opinion.
It has been one month since the crypto price rally began due to speculations around exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Solana [SOL] has achieved one of the most remarkable price surges among all the cryptocurrencies during the ongoing bull run.
Since mid-October, SOL’s price has surged by more than 160%. It was trading at $57.86 at press time.
We recently witnessed some large-scale whale activity too. On 12 November, for instance, Whale Alert reported two substantial Solana transactions, each exceeding $30 million.
The first transaction involved the transfer of 325,222 SOL, valued at over $18.6 million, to Binance. The second transfer consisted of 199,998 tokens, valued at over $11.5 million, sent to the Coinbase exchange.
Clearly, the token is a major player in the crypto market, attracting a large number of investors. That is why AMBCrypto has looked at Solana’s price fortunes in the past too.
How it began… Solana journey
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko published a whitepaper in late 2017, describing the proof of history (PoH) consensus mechanism.
Solana combined both PoH and proof of stake (PoS) on its blockchain project. It is critical at this juncture that we understand what both these mechanisms
PoH is a proof for verifying order and passage of time between events, is used to encode trustless passage of time into a ledger. PoS requires validators to stake some of their coins as collateral. The network then chooses a validator at random to construct a new block depending on stake size and other parameters.
Built by San Francisco-based Solana Labs, Solana got launched in 2017. The open-source blockchain project is currently run by Geneva-based Solana Foundation.
Disruptive “Ethereum killer”
Solana’s launch was a major disrupter in the crypto industry as it challenged the dominance of Ethereum [ETH]. So much so that it came to be known as “Ethereum killer.”
Much of the buzz surrounding Solana was due to its distinct advantage over Ethereum in terms of transaction processing speed and transaction costs. Solana can process as many as 50,000 transactions per second (TPS), and its average cost per transaction is $0.00025. In contrast, Ethereum can only handle less than 15 TPS, while average transaction fees are around $1.68.
As a result, the blockchain network onboarded a large number of enthusiasts.
According to on-chain analyst Patrick Scott, Solana’s DEX volume has been skyrocketing in recent days. He also referred to the recovering Total Value Locked (TVL).
DEX Volume on Solana exploding the past few days.
Important to note that Solana’s volume over the past 24 hours has been nearly 3X its total DEX TVL ($424M vs $153M). In comparison, other major chains have less 24 hour volume than TVL.
High volume/TVL should push fees higher,… pic.twitter.com/6Q0XkQsmvU
— Patrick Scott | Dynamo DeFi (@Dynamo_Patrick) November 3, 2023
Ryan Sean Adams, co-founder of the Bankless VC fund, meanwhile criticized its relatively smaller TVL in comparison to other L2 blockchains.
But Helios CEO Mert Mumtaz quickly dismissed Adam’s take. Mumtaz said TVL was a “noisy” metric. He also pointed out that SOL easily trumped Ethereum when it came to TPS.
Ryan, you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing lol
TVL and active addresses are easily gamed, noisy metrics — especially in the context of people who farm L2 airdrops
Solana does more TPS than all those combined while being 100x cheaper and having a much larger community
— mert | helius.dev (@0xMert_) November 3, 2023
Read Solana’s [SOL] Price Prediction 2023-24
Has Solana managed to contain its outages??
However, the network was notorious for its outages. But the team worked on resolving this persistent issue. The team claimed in July to have not suffered any outages since February.
Fyi there’s a $400k reward for anyone that can find code that can turn off Solana
Please go ahead and find ithttps://t.co/2oxcB0EEyx
— Jacob Creech (@jacobvcreech) October 12, 2023
Is Solana a security?
Even as Solana is touted to be the “Ethereum killer,” Yakovenko seemed to be in agreement with the idea of using Ethereum as an L2 blockchain for Solana.
Would it be possible for ethereum to be a @solana L2? Probably more likely than you might think at first glance. L2s are bridge protocols that provide one way security. In this setup, holders of solana assets on ethereum would have finality guarantees that they can exit back… https://t.co/XE5ETsxGIW
— toly 🇺🇸 (@aeyakovenko) July 2, 2023
Even Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin is an admirer of Solana. When the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Binance and Coinbase in early June, it labeled several altcoins, including SOL, as securities.
Buterin rued the manner in which the regulator was targeting projects like Solana.
The one comment I’ll make is that I feel bad that @solana and other projects are getting hit in this way. They don’t deserve it, and if ethereum ends up “winning” through all other blockchains getting kicked off exchanges, that’s not an honorable way to win, and in the long term…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 30, 2023
At this point, we decided it’s a good time to ask ChatGPT about different aspects of Solana. ChatGPT has proven to be valuable for traders and analysts.
At first, ChatGPT wasn’t able to provide any details. So I decided to educate and jailbreak it.
I asked ChatGPT if it thought the court would overturn the SEC’s decision to classify Solana as a security.
While the classic version refused to comment on the matter, the jailbroken version gave a rather speculative response.
Source: ChatGPT
Looking at Solana’s price movement
Solana emerged as one of the most popular cryptocurrencies within a few years of its launch. In November 2021, it reached an all-time high (ATH) of $250. Its market cap also reached an ATH of $75 billion, making it the fifth-largest cryptocurrency.
But the bloodbath last year led to SOL plummeting to as low as $10 in December 2022. It was in November 2022 that FTX [FTT], the monstrously huge blockchain project of Sam Bankman-Fried “SBF,” collapsed and filed for bankruptcy in the U.S.
Remember that SBF was one of the most vocal proponents of the Solana network. The community saw him as a credible and smart entrepreneur who was leading one of the largest crypto exchanges across the world.
The Solana Foundation had sold a significant amount of SOL tokens to FTX and Alameda Research. This amounted to 58.08 million SOL, or 11% of the circulating supply at the time FTX filed for bankruptcy. The total value of these tokens was estimated to be $1.1 billion at the time.
Early this month, the court announced its final judgment in the case against SBF, finding him guilty on all the seven counts. The judge set the sentencing date for 28 March 2024; SBF could be sentenced for a maximum of 115 years.
The reputation of Solana took a beating during the episode. But, a lot has changed since then.
During the recent bull run, its price surged more than 160% within a month to $57.86 at press time.
Source: SOL/USD, TradingView
However, both SOL’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Money Flow Index (MFI) rested below the neutral 50-level. It seems that the price rally isn’t going to last long as these on-chart indicators suggested.
However, the overwhelming majority of opinion favors a further price rally for Solana.
Quizzing ChatGPT about Solana’s price trends
We decided to ask ChatGPT for its take on the price trends of Solana in the future. ChatGPT has been a remarkable AI chatbot which has proved to be a powerful tool for learning on an array of topics. Yet, we must remember that the bot is engineered to mimic a human, and is not necessarily guaranteed to be factually accurate.
And yet, it is possible to obtain some guesses from the chatbot on what the future might hold if we provide it with details about recent price movements.
We asked ChatGPT to predict Solana’s price towards the end of the year.
Source: ChatGPT
Solana could potentially reach a stellar price of $500 by the end of December 2023, forecasted ChatGPT. A surge of 8x in its price within two months seems very unlikely.
We then asked ChatGPT to predict Solana’s cryptocurrency by the end of 2024. As usual, its classic version didn’t solicit any response.
But the jailbroken version predicted SOL’s price to hit $1,000 by December 2024.
Source: ChatGPT
I suppose the bot was already presuming that its earlier prediction of $500 in December 2023 would indeed come true. It thereafter expected SOL to surge even further to $1,000.
Is your portfolio green? Check out the SOL Profit Calculator
Conclusion
ChatGPT predicted too positive a performance for Solana in 2023 and 2024. It expected SOL to reach $1,000 by December 2024. However, its on-chart metrics were rather modest.
Traders are advised to do their own research before investing in a crypto-asset.
Source: https://eng.ambcrypto.com/chatgpt-solana-price-prediction-nov-19