The Year in Solana: A Comeback Story

In a return tale for the ages, Solana rose from the depths of crypto’s spring in 2022 to become one of the most popular bitcoin for both retail and blockchain enthusiasts.

” Chewing glass is in our DNA, and we’ll get through up”. Anatoly Yakovenko, a co-founder of Solana, posted on Twitter ( also known as X ) in the winter of 2022. &nbsp,

Fast forward two years, amid expanding chance appetites and post gold madness, Solana in 2024 has witnessed violent customer growth.

With upcoming technological advancements like application customer Firedancer just around the corner, the bitcoin is poised to stir old stories about its frequent outages and professional inferiorities. &nbsp,

With the price of its native token, SOL, rising by nearly 200 % over the past year, Solana now holds the position of the fifth-largest crypto by market cap thanks to improved regulation clearness and ETF debate, which Solana fans are hoping for even more in the near future. &nbsp,

Before that, let’s revisit the year of Solana in 2024. &nbsp,

Solana reestablishes footing, breaks all-time high

Solana has made an extraordinary comeback, rising over 275 % this year and briefly reaching a new all-time high, after trading at just$ 8 following the FTX collapse in late 2022. &nbsp,

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.

Despite having a market cap that is only a fraction of Ethereum’s, Solana has surpassed Ethereum, the second-largest crypto asset, in key metrics like real economic value, active addresses, and decentralized exchange volume, according to data collected by Syncracy over the past year.

The likelihood of Solana ETFs is rising, potentially positioning the network’s native token for greater adoption through traditional financial channels, even though its price has fallen 17 % from its all-time high of$ 263 on November 23. &nbsp,

Meme coin supercycle? &nbsp,

In 2024, the popularity of meme coins, tokens associated with internet memes and popular culture events, surmounted a wave of cultural relevance and rife with speculation. &nbsp,

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. What some called the “meme coin supercycle” was caused by the sheer volume of new tokens available on Solana.

The cycle’s catalyst? Platforms like Pump. Fun, a meme coin launchpad that made it easier for anyone to create a new token with just a few clicks. &nbsp,

Since the platform’s launch in January 2024, more than 4 million tokens have been created thanks to this accessibility. &nbsp,

While the majority of the market is currently free, some have gained significant value and have become well-known enough to trade in the top 100 coins by market capitalization.

The Solana Saga

The Solana Saga, the first smartphone from Solana, initially attracted scant enthusiasm from die-hard Solana residents, but it resurrected in late 2023. &nbsp,

Users clamoring for airdrops connected to the phone’s soulbound token, which ultimately caused the Saga to sell out, in a last-minute frenzy.

Building on that momentum, Solana introduced a second edition, the Seeker, in 2024. Seeker offers smartphone users a less expensive option to the Saga 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. &nbsp,

Solana’s real-world connections go beyond smartphones, extending to handheld gaming devices and a slew of decentralized infrastructure ( DePIN ) projects. &nbsp,

Some project supporters believe that these projects are trying to use decentralized networks and blockchain technology to reinvent real-world infrastructure. &nbsp,

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. &nbsp,

Firedancer, spearheaded by crypto investment company and infrastructure developer Jump Crypto, was the highlight of Solana’s recent Breakpoint conference in Singapore. &nbsp,

The innovative validator client is designed to optimize hardware utilization and eliminate software inefficiencies, setting the stage for improving Solana’s network performance. &nbsp,

An early prototype of Firedancer— Freakdancer—went live on Solana’s mainnet in September. According to an uptime page, no outages have been reported in that time so far.

Institutions believe Solana has matured

This year, active crypto participants have flocked to Solana in droves, but VanEck and other major companies are also nearby. 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.

In early 2024, PayPal made headlines by enabling its PYUSD stablecoin on Solana, highlighting the potential of blockchain as a backbone for digital payments, and highlighting the significance of PYUSD on Solana’s” significant benefits for commerce use cases.”

Major financial institutions want to expand access to mainstream financial participants while introducing the blockchain’s native token into the same mainstream investment channels as Bitcoin and Ethereum.