Why Is Solana (SOL) Price Up This Week?

Solana is witnessing a constant upward price movement in the cryptocurrency market in Q4, 2023. As of December 26, 2023, the Solana price is trading at $115, recording monthly gains of 100% and weekly gains of 53%. Solana crossed the $100 mark after almost 20 months since April 2022.  

Let us discuss the market performance and price history of Solana along with the reasons behind Solana’s ongoing price surge.

Factors Propelling Solana’s Rise

Solana price is up as a result of the rising SPL token airdrops and listing on exchanges, increased DeFi and NFT activity on the Solana network, and increasing trading volume. 

SPL Token Airdrops

Solana has always been a viable blockchain network with high transaction processing for DeFi development. Jito is one of the DeFi projects on Solana that launched its highly anticipated JTO token airdrop. Adding to that, Coinbase announced the listing of JTO tokens on December 6, 2023.

Solana price increased by 15% and was trading over $72 on December 8, 2023 as a result of the Jito DeFi project airdrop and listing on crypto exchange platforms. The JTO token was launched at a starting price of $6.01 and distributed around $225 million worth of JTO tokens in its recent airdrop. Even though the JTO price is currently trading at $2.82, it brought a huge attention to the Solana and led to its price surge.

Potential Solana ecosystem airdrops that you can still qualify for:

MarginFi – Borrowing/lending (active points system)
Tensor – NFT exchange (active points system)
Drift – perp dex
Kamino – Borrowing/lending (upcoming points system)
Parcl – Real estate speculation (upcoming…

— Patrick Scott | Dynamo DeFi (@Dynamo_Patrick) December 8, 2023

Solana proponents are expecting a few more airdrops of the SPL tokens airdrops of Solana DeFi projects, following the success of JTO airdrop. Analyst Patrick Scott posted on X, listing the upcoming Solana token airdrops for those who missed the JTO airdrop. The anticipation of these upcoming airdrops is a primary reason behind Solana’s price rise.

Rising NFT Sales Volume

Solana’s 24-hour NFT sales volume has surpassed the NFT sales volume of Ethereum on June 30, 2023. According to CryptoSlam, Solana is currently at the third position in terms of 30-day NFT sales volume after the two top blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum.

NFT sales worth $162 million took place on the Solana Network, which is up by 350% in the last 30 days. Coming to the number of NFT transactions, Solana ranks above Bitcoin and Ethereum with more than 2 million transactions. This incredible rise in NFT trading activity adds to the ongoing price rally of Solana.

Tech Upgrades 

After facing network outages several times previously, Solana’s reputation of being the fastest blockchain crumbled. However, the technical upgrades of the network are strengthening the blockchain. The Solana network performance improved significantly in H1, 2023 with 100% uptime.

Solana’s developers keep bringing tech upgrades to make the coin even more perfect for several use cases. It has added optional zero-knowledge-compatible encryption that will make the transactions even more secure. Furthermore, Solana will help extend Render Network into new applications, such as machine learning and inference training.

Solana supports several innovative blockchain applications including NFTs, Web3 gaming, DeFi projects, and other decentralized applications. The fundamental technical strength of Solana is an add on feature to its ultra-speed transaction processing at low fees. In addition, Solana is one of the first blockchain to launch a Web3 smartphone in April 2023. 

Solana price surged by 5% on December 6, 2023 when its founder Anatoly Yakovenko talked about the upcoming launch of new Web3 smartphone models with more applications. 

Sol Prediction : What’s Next For Solana Price? 

Considering the recent price breakout of Solana, popular crypto analysts like Ali Martinez estimated a continuous price rise in the upcoming weeks. Ali posted on X stating that the price breakout above $68 can propel Solana’s price to $90. However, if the price drops below the $60 support, it could fall back to $47. 

On another note, global investment manager VanEck estimated over 10,000% Solana price rally by 2030. The Solana price is already on the uptrend as the year comes to end, showing the possibility of VanEck’s estimation!