In a comeback story for the ages, Solana surged from the depths of crypto’s winter in 2022 into the limelight this year, becoming one of the most utilized blockchains for crypto enthusiasts and retail novices alike.
“Chewing glass is in our DNA, and we’ll get through together.” Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko posted on Twitter (aka X) during the winter of 2022.
Fast forward two years, amid expanding risk appetites and meme coin mania, Solana in 2024 has witnessed explosive user growth.
The blockchain is poised to shake old narratives about its frequent outages and technical inferiorities, with impending technological unlocks like software client Firedancer just around the corner.
With the price of its native token—SOL—jumping nearly 200% in the last year, Solana now sits as the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, as improved regulatory clarity and ETF speculation have Solana enthusiasts hoping for even more in the near future.
Before that, let’s revisit the year of Solana in 2024.
Solana reestablishes footing, breaks all-time high
Once trading at a mere $8 following the FTX collapse in late 2022, Solana has staged an extraordinary comeback, gaining over 275% this year and briefly reaching a new all-time high.
Dismissed by some as a casualty of the crypto winter, Solana’s revival showcases the resilience of its ecosystem, which co-founder of competing layer-1 Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, once cheered on.
Data gathered from the last year by Syncracy reveals that Solana has surpassed Ethereum, the second largest crypto asset, in key metrics such as real economic value, active addresses, and decentralized exchange volume, despite its market cap remaining a fraction of Ethereum’s.
While its price has retraced 17% from its November 23 all-time high of $263, the likelihood of Solana ETFs is increasing, potentially positioning the network’s native token for greater adoption through traditional financial mediums.
Meme coin supercycle?
Meme coins, tokens known for their ties to internet memes and pop culture events, saw an unprecedented surge on Solana in 2024, riding a wave of cultural relevance and rampant speculation.
While meme coins are not a new phenomenon, iconic tokens like Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) are now the top 15 tokens by market cap and darlings of the previous cycle. The sheer proliferation of new tokens on Solana led to what some dubbed the “meme coin supercycle.”
The cycle’s catalyst? Platforms like Pump.fun, a meme coin launchpad that democratized token creation, allowing any user to create a new token with just a few clicks.
This accessibility fueled the creation of more than 4 million tokens since the platform launch in January 2024.
While most hold no value now, some have led traders to significant gains and have become notable enough to trade within the top 100 coins by market capitalization.
The Solana Saga
The Solana Saga, Solana’s first smartphone, initially launched to muted enthusiasm among diehard Solana community members but experienced a resurgence in late 2023.
A last-minute frenzy ensued as users clamored to secure airdrops linked to the phone’s soulbound token, ultimately driving the Saga to sell out.
Building on that momentum, Solana introduced a second edition, the Seeker, in 2024. Seeker provides phone buyers a cheaper alternative to the Saga, yet with upgraded hardware.
Set to release in Q1 2025, the Seeker has already registered over 140,000 pre-orders and more than $65 million in devices.
Solana’s real-world connections go beyond smartphones, extending to handheld gaming devices and a slew of decentralized infrastructure (DePIN) projects.
Those projects are attempting to reinvent real-world infrastructure using decentralized networks and blockchain technology, a potentially revolutionary shift according to some proponents.
Take, for example, Helium, a decentralized mobile network, and Teleport, a ride-sharing platform leveraging Solana’s technology, have seen significant growth in 2024. Helium’s Mobile token (MOBILE) has surged over 300% year-to-date, underscoring the momentum in the sector.
Technical improvements are coming
Solana’s technical backbone has, at times, wavered as the blockchain battled issues with downtime and outages in the past. However, improvements to its infrastructure are fast approaching, most notably with the release of Solana Firedancer.
Firedancer, spearheaded by crypto investment company and infrastructure developer Jump Crypto, was the highlight of Solana’s recent Breakpoint conference in Singapore.
The innovative validator client is designed to optimize hardware utilization and eliminate software inefficiencies, setting the stage for improving Solana’s network performance.
An early prototype of Firedancer—Freakdancer—went live on Solana’s mainnet in September. So far, no outages have been reported in that time, according to an uptime page.
Institutions think Solana has grown up
Active crypto participants have flocked to Solana in droves this year, but global institutions are also lurking, including VanEck. Just a year after Visa’s detailed analysis of Solana’s scalability, low-cost structure, and suitability for payments, other financial giants have joined the Solana ecosystem.
PayPal made headlines in early 2024 by enabling its PYUSD stablecoin on Solana, underscoring the blockchain’s potential as a backbone for digital payments and emphasizing that PYUSD on Solana unlocked “significant benefits for commerce use cases.”
Major financial players aim to bring the blockchain’s native token into the same mainstream investment channels as Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to provide broader access to mainstream financial participants.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
