Will Solana hit $260 again? Five experts share where it’s going next – DL News

It’s had some shakes lately, but Solana is up 390% in the past year.

Its $4.9 billion NFT market is closing in on rival Ethereum in terms of trading volume.

And despite a few glitches, including an hours-long network outage on February 6, its SOL token has bounced back.

But Solana has failed to keep up with the rising prices of Ethereum and Bitcoin, remaining relatively flat since the post-outage rally at $103.

Here are five analysts’ views on what’s going on with Solana.

CoinShares’ Max Shannon

“Solana is still the crypto darling,” even given the hit it took after the outage in early February, CoinShares analyst Max Shannon told DL News.

Shannon said bullish Bitcoin sentiment isn’t hurting either.

Crypto prices generally rallied in 2024, after the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved nearly a dozen mock Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. In just over a month, the new ETFs have racked up record inflows.

Shannon joins other analysts in pointing to several successful airdrops; independent validators including Firedancer that will “enhance network redundancy” and help prevent future outages; and a hopeful Bitcoin market as reasons why Solana’s rise will continue.

In a Monday blog post, Shannon pointed to Solana’s evolving onchain order book system as a potential blow to dominant Ethereum.

According to Shannon, the new order book capability will provide better user experiences, better protocol capital efficiency and improved transparency compared to rival Ethereum’s “hybrid or off-chain” order books, resulting in a “very large [improved] user experience.”

The beginning of Messari’s Kel

As for Solana’s several outages, the most recent of which occurred earlier this month, investors are forgiving.

Solana’s token fell 4% on the news, then rallied to trade above $110.

“This is an early stage network, outages are to be expected,” Messari analyst Kel Eleje told DL News.

He pointed to an overall decrease in outages since Solana’s launch, and a noticeable increase in network speed.

Solana’s transactions per second have increased nearly fivefold since 2021, from 200 to 900 – much faster than Ethereum’s 12 transactions per second, or Bitcoin’s seven.

“The trend is favorable,” Eleje said.

According to Eleje, growth will be encouraged by Solana-native “breakout applications” such as NFT drop platform DRiP and decentralized wireless networking project Helium, which recently migrated to Solana.

Helium has also partnered with Solana’s Saga mobile device. Saga owners received periodic free airdrops like BONK in December.

Solana users are also looking forward to more of the airdrops that drove growth late into 2023.

Eleje pointed to new, release-ready clients such as Firedancer, Sig, and Agave, which aim to increase network scalability.

Real Vision’s Raoul Pal

Entrepreneur Raoul Pal sees Solana going much higher.

Pal is the co-founder and CEO of Real Vision, a financial research platform, and has a million followers on X.

In an interview this month with SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci, Pal said Solana will rise to between $750 and $1,000, closing in on the third-place token in crypto, behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.

“It’s the relative outperformer,” compared to the other two cryptocurrencies, he said.

VanEck

In October, ETF provider VanEck provided a valuation scenario that had Solana rising as high as $3,211.28 or as low as $10 by the year 2030.

VanEck’s so-called base case for Solana is $335, based on estimated cash flow to token holders. That’s three times its current price.

But the firm said the number could be much higher if it managed to pull ahead of rival Ethereum to become the leading DeFi chain in that time.

However, VanEck said that “Solana’s likelihood of hosting the majority of the world’s crypto transactions by 2030 is lower than Ethereum’s.”

The firm still pointed to room to grow for the network, promising adoption by new developers and venture capitalists.

“A meaningful weighting to SOL in investor portfolios is warranted.”

Fundstrat’s Sean Farrell

Despite its rally, Solana isn’t even halfway to its 2021 all-time high of $260.

At the time, Solana was called a “Sam coin”, a reference to convicted FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who supported Solana and Solana projects. The FTX crash of 2022 sent Solana’s price down 97%, making it one of the worst-hit assets of the bear market.

Its price has climbed a whopping 1,065% since then. To reach all-time highs, it would need to jump around 130% from its current price.

Fundstrat Global Advisors analyst Sean Farrell kept it simple.

“We are seeing new all-time highs this year,” he told DL News.

Today, Solana is hovering around $109.

Tyler Pearson is a market correspondent at DL News. He is based out of Alberta, Canada. Do you have a tip? Reach out to him at [email protected].