2021 obtained off to a fast begin and the present crypto bull market has seen property like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) shoot to new all-time highs on an virtually every day foundation. 

Whereas new value highs are constructive for traders, they do current a variety of challenges referring to charges, transaction speeds and the centralization of what’s meant to be a decentralized ecosystem. Since mid-2020 institutional traders have been steadily flooding into cryptocurrency and that is exacerbating the problem of scalability, excessive transaction prices and prolonged affirmation instances on the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain.

Eth2 is steadily rolling out, however it might nonetheless be a while earlier than customers will profit from its host of recent options. This leaves the door open for different viable candidates to fill the void and a handful of layer 2 tasks are gaining traction within the decentralized finance house.

One such challenge that has been making waves up to now 6 months is Solana (SOL). Based by Anatoly Yakovenko and designed a workforce of former engineers from globally acknowledged firms together with Intel, Dropbox, and Qualcomm, Solana claims to be a censorship-resistant blockchain that gives the open infrastructure required for international adoption.

SOL/USDT 4-hour chart. Supply: TradingView

Some specialists view the challenge as a potential Ethereum competitor and FTX alternate co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried threw his help behind the challenge when he selected it to host his DeFi challenge known as Serum.

In keeping with Bankman-Fried, Ethereum is incapable of dealing with the fast progress seen within the decentralized finance sector and the one approach across the scalability and transaction price challenges is to construct on different networks like Solana.

Bankman-Fried claims to have completely examined greater than 30 of the highest blockchain tasks, together with Ethereum, earlier than deciding on Solana and up to now he referenced the community’s skill to course of 50,000 transactions per second.

When requested about scaling enhancements with Eth2, Bankman-Fried steered that it’s nonetheless inadequate, saying the crypto sector wants one thing that’s “not simply 100 instances quicker than Ethereum, we’d like, like, one million instances quicker than Ethereum.”

Solana token features traction

Initially after itemizing at exchanges, SOL token traded between the $0.50 to $0.91 vary in April and July of 2020. This was earlier than any main challenge developments had been introduced however on July 27, Bankman-Fried tweeted:

“Serum is constructed on the @solana blockchain. Solana can course of 10,000 instances as a lot as Ethereum; and it is 1,000,000 instances cheaper. And in contrast to many facet chains, Solana is a fully-fledged, decentralized blockchain with over 100 validators.”

SOL/USDT every day chart. Supply: TradingView

Shortly after the announcement, SOL noticed a noticeable uptick in purchase stress as and over the following two months its quantity and value surged as the typical every day quantity elevated from $1 million to $41 million and the token value spiked to $4.89.

Because the DeFi bull run ended and merchants took income, SOL was not spared from the carnage and its value fell as little as $1.21 earlier than reclaiming the $3.00 vary up to now month.

Apart from present as a environment friendly various to the Etheruem community, the Solana blockchain has adopted the footsteps of different networks that understand how integral stablecoins are to the expansion of the crypto sector.

In response to the latest announcement from the OCC that banks “might use new applied sciences, together with INVNs and associated stablecoins, to carry out bank-permissible capabilities, akin to fee actions,” the Solana workforce tweeted that the approval would additionally profit SOL and the community. Twitter feed.

The workforce said:

“Massive information for public blockchains & stablecoins! USDC is already built-in on Solana, which is the one chain in the present day that may settle 50k+ txns per second, with charges as little as $0.00001 per txn. Over $50,000,000 in USDC-SPL is presently in circulation!”

The views and opinions expressed listed here are solely these of the writer and don’t essentially replicate the views of Cointelegraph.com. Each funding and buying and selling transfer entails danger, it is best to conduct your personal analysis when making a call.