KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Solana has been one of the poorest performers and the worst value eroders amongst the top 10 cryptos by market cap.
- Between 1 January to 31 December, 2022 – SOL price had lost over 95% in market capitalization – having fallen from $181 to under $8.
- But since the beginning of 2023, SOL price has been on a strong upward trend, and while regaining older ATHs is a very long way away, current upward trajectory can bring some relief to existing investors.
Solana is a crypto project that grew extremely popular during the bull run of 2021 as it was touted as an ‘Ethereum killer’ at one point in time. It had monumentally higher transactions speeds and gas fees that are a fraction that on Ethereum’s. However, a series of network outages and hacks have dented the reputation severely and the bear run of 2022 has been especially hard for the token.
Despite all these factors, Solana has been on a roll since the beginning of 2023 and has managed to gain around 150% in the past two and a half weeks alone. Along with that a recent report highlighted by Solana’s Twitter handle shows it has the fastest growing developer ecosystem – surpassing 2000 total developers in 2022! Let’s take a deeper look!
Additional Read: Top Most Searched Cryptos Worldwide
1/ A new report by @ElectricCapital shows that Solana is the fastest growing developer ecosystem, surpassing 2,000 total developers in 2022. It's second in raw numbers only to Ethereum.
Let's dig into the numbers.https://t.co/HQvPbQzQD2 pic.twitter.com/xV6pnoT7db
— Solana (@solana) January 17, 2023
SOL TECHNICAL OVERVIEW
SOL/USD | Source: Tradingview
From a technical standpoint, SOL price has been on an incredible rally since the beginning of 2023. The year began with SOL price trading just below $10 and now it is around $23-$25 region. In the first two days itself, Solana price had managed to break out of the 50 day moving average and now about two weeks later, it is very close to providing a breakout over the 200 day moving average too. The Relative Strength Index had reached extreme overbought regions and hence the token price is consolidating for the past two-three days.
SOL price can be expected to meet with some strong resistance at the $29 region (trendline marked in blue) which also happens to almost coincide with the 200 day moving average. If it is able to breach past that, and from the looks of it, it very well could – then SOL price would be stuck within a consolidation zone between the two trendlines (marked in blue) between $29 to $47. However, overall – things seem pretty well off for the immediate future of the altcoin.
Solana Development Activity at the lowest point in the past year!
SOL Development Activity | Source: Santiment
While, the report highlighted by Solana’s Twitter handle indicates that Solana is the fastest growing developer ecosystem, surpassing 2,000 total developers in 2022 and that it’s second in raw numbers only to Ethereum. But on the other hand, actual developmental activity as tracked by crypto analytical platform, Santiment – indicates that the token’s development activity is at the lowest point in the past year!
This begs the question – what are all these developers doing?
Solana’s Weighted Sentiment in the negative zone
SOL Weighted Sentiment | Source: Santiment
As you can see from the chart above, Solana’s weighted sentiment is currently in the negative zone and has been there for most of the past year also. This is pretty much understandable as the year of 2022 was a heavy bear market and sentiments do tend to turn to the negative side. And especially when you talk about a token that has eroded over 95% of its value in the matter of a year.
Read More: Polygon Vs Solana Price Prediction
Conclusion
Thus in conclusion, we can safely say that while Solana’s price appreciation in the past two and a half weeks have been nothing short of incredible, investors who are wanting to get into the action now shouldn’t fall into FOMO and buy into it in a hurry. Proper research and due diligence is very important before you invest in this token as SOL is also one of the more volatile cryptos and hasn’t had a very good past year – so people need to be wary of pump and dump schemes that could be occurring behind the scenes.
Prices as on 18 January, 2023.
