Ethereum vs Solana Archives

31st January 2024

Analyst Compared Solana To Ethereum ICO Boom, What Does This Mean For SOL Price?

Crypto analyst Santiago Santos recently drew parallels between the Solana and Ethereum networks. As part of his analysis, Santos suggested that Solana had an advantage over Ethereum, something which he believes could cause the former to catch up with the latter soon enough.

Solana’s Recent Run Similar To Ethereum’s ICO Boom

Santos mentioned in an X (formerly Twitter) post that Solana is “going through what Ethereum did during the ICO boom.” However, unlike then, when it was only whitepapers, Solana has applications seeing meaningful usage and growth, the analyst further claimed. This is one of the reasons why Santos believes that Solana will “converge on Ethereum faster than most believe.”

The crypto analyst was referring to Solana’s recent run, with the network seeing a lot of activity. Some of this activity has been credited to the applications and protocols being built on the Solana network. Particularly, the Decentralized Exchange (DEX) Jupiter has been drawing a lot of attention to Solana and even recently surpassed Ethereum’s Uniswap in daily trading volume.

On the other hand, Ethereum is known to have generated significant buzz at the height of the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) boom, with a lot of projects swamping the network at the time. Notably, Ethereum’s Decentralized Finance (DeFi) landscape then happened to give the network an edge, a contributing factor to ETH’s rise to become the second largest crypto token.

Santos’ recent comment echoes a growing belief in the crypto community that Solana may indeed be primed enough to take Ethereum’s place as the King of DeFi. Narratives that have continued to work in Solana’s favor include its speed and cost-effectiveness.

Following Santos’ post, another X user hinted that Solana’s adoption rate would probably be higher than Ethereum’s, considering users don’t have to worry about high fees.

Solana price chart from Tradingview.com (Ethereum)

Solana To Hit $150 Soon?

The significant activity on the Solana network is believed to be one of the catalysts that could drive SOL’s price to $150. Several analysts have continued to highlight that price level as the next significant stop for the crypto token. Moreover, Jupiter is set to airdrop its JUP tokens on January 31.

This highly anticipated event will cause new money to flow into the Solana ecosystem, with SOL’s price likely to be positively impacted by this splurge of liquidity. Beyond Jupiter, other DeFi projects on Solana are making waves, and these projects could also launch their native tokens at some point in the year.

At the time of writing, SOL is trading at just over $100, down over 2% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

3rd January 2024

Solana Users Face Mounting Threat As Drainer Attacks Surge, SOL Price Plummets 13%

As the price of Solana (SOL) has skyrocketed by an astounding 722% year-to-date, the network’s rapid growth has attracted both attention and challenges.

Not only has the native token gained significant value, but the use of Solana-based meme coins such as Bonk Inu (BONK), which has grown over 854% year-to-date, and decentralized applications (dApps) have skyrocketed. Unfortunately, this increased popularity has led to increased attacks against the so-called “Ethereum Killer.”

Malicious Solana dApps Exploited

Web3 security firm Blockaid has recently observed a concerning trend of users falling victim to attacks by Solana-based drainers.

One notable example is the website lessfeesndgas[.]org, which succeeded in stealing tokens from the Solana Program Library (SPL), which is designed to support the creation and management of tokens on Solana and SOL worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Interestingly, according to the company’s post on X (formerly Twitter), Blockaid’s secure wallets remained immune to these attacks from the moment the site went live, preventing any connections from being made.

Solana

The sophistication of these drainers is noteworthy, according to the firm, as they can fool the simulations used by Solana wallets, causing users to sign malicious transactions unknowingly. Web3 security firm Blockaid further stated:

As Solana continues to gain popularity, drainer groups are increasingly moving towards it, as indicated by the growing number of malicious Solana dApps detected by Blockaid.

Solana’s rapid ascent as a high-performance blockchain platform has drawn admiration and scrutiny. Its ability to process transactions quickly and at a lower cost than Ethereum has positioned it as a strong competitor.

However, the network’s success has also made it an attractive target for malicious actors seeking to exploit vulnerabilities and capitalize on its growing user base.

Still, this is not the only bad news for Solana in the past few hours, as its native token has been experiencing a continuous sharp drop in price, leading to the belief that its uptrend and bull run may be over despite the possibility of a rebound in the overall crypto market.

Stablecoin Surge And NFT Sales Fail To Prevent SOL’s Price Drop

In just five hours, the price of SOL experienced a significant 13% drop, hitting a low of $85 on Wednesday. This decline occurred despite notable growth in stablecoin transfers, which saw a rise of over 45% this week.

Solana

Additionally, on Tuesday, SOL surpassed Ethereum in monthly trading volume for non-fungible token (NFT) sales, marking a milestone for the network.

SOL is the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, boasting a market capitalization of $42.6 billion. It holds a $12 billion lead over XRP and trails just behind Binance Coin (BNB) by a mere $6 billion.

The trajectory of SOL’s price remains uncertain as investors await signs of a potential bullish momentum resurgence.

Building a more secure framework for decentralized applications (dApps) could be pivotal in restoring investor confidence and attracting additional capital to the ecosystem, potentially propelling SOL to reclaim its one-year high of $126, previously achieved on December 25.

Solana

Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com

3rd January 2024

Solana Has Flipped Ethereum In Yet Another Metric In Its Bid To Reach $200

Solana has continued its bullish sentiment in its ecosystem to flip Ethereum in the stablecoin market for the second week in a row, according to on-chain data. SOL’s price gain has slowed in the past week, showing a negative 2.3% in a 7-day timeframe at the time of writing. However, stablecoin transfers on the Solana chain reveal the blockchain retaining its reputation as an Ethereum killer, registering more than $10.3 billion more trading volume in the last week.

Stablecoins Growing On Solana

Ethereum has mostly dominated the stablecoin market since the inception of Tether USDT. However, according to data from the crypto analytics platform Artemis, stablecoin trading volume on Solana surpassed Ethereum last week for the second week in a row, showing how quickly Solana is gaining traction. Solana registered $40.86 billion in stablecoin volume, compared to Ethereum’s trading volume of $30.31 billion.

On-chain numbers since December demonstrate that SOL is quickly becoming the chain of choice for stablecoin usage and transactions. Solana surpassed Ethereum in stablecoin volume for the first time in the week leading to December 25. During this period, SOL registered a weekly stablecoin trading volume of $103.01 billion, $12.14 billion more than Ethereum’s volume of $90.87 billion.

Solana Ethereum

Solana also went on a crazy surge last year, registering over a 950% gain as it reached a yearly high of $121. During this period, we saw Solana compete vigorously with Ethereum across various metrics.

Stablecoin trading volume, in particular, is at a 2,213% gain in a 3-month timeframe. The chain also witnessed 27.17 million stablecoin transactions in the same timeframe, compared to Ethereum’s 1.17 million transactions.

DeFi aggregator DeFiLlama also shows DEX trading volume on SOL soared to $28.13 billion in December, surpassing Ethereum L2 chains Arbitrum and Polygon. Solana also overtook Ethereum in NFT trading volume in early December.

SOL Price To $200?

The Solana ecosystem is expanding quickly, as evidenced by price surges and on-chain metrics. The price surge can also be attributed to various airdrops and the hype surrounding BONK, the first meme coin on the Solana chain. As more people buy and trade SOL and other assets on the blockchain, demand for the SOL coin is likely to increase.

At the time of writing, SOL is trading at $107, down by 5.74% and 3.44% in the past 24 hours and seven days respectively. It is now facing resistance at around $115, and a failure to rally above this price point could lead to a continued consolation toward support at $100.

While there are never any guarantees, SOL’s strong fundamentals point to a potential price appreciation throughout the year and SOL’s path to revisiting the $200 price level and beyond.

If Solana continues to also outpace Ethereum and Ethereum L2 chains on key metrics and grows its real-world utility, $200 could be on the horizon sooner than most investors would expect.

Solana price chart from Tradingview.com