Can Solana reach $260 again? What do five experts say?

Author: Tyler Pearson, DL News; Compiler: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

• < p>The Solana token has gained 350% over the past year, thanks in part to several large token airdrops.

• An outage on February 6 did not stop Solana’s rise, and it has since risen 20%.

• Analysts and experts share what will drive Solana in 2024.

There has been some volatility lately, but Solana is up 390% in the past year.

Its $4.9 billion NFT market is approaching rival Ethereum in terms of transaction volume.

Despite some glitches, including an hours-long network outage on February 6, its SOL token has rebounded.

But Solana has failed to keep pace with the surge in Ethereum and Bitcoin prices, remaining relatively flat since rising to $103 following the outage.

Here's what five analysts have to say about Solana's current situation.

Max Shannon of CoinShares

CoinShares analyst Max Shannon said, “Solana remains the darling of cryptocurrencies ”, although it took a hit after an outage in early February.

Shannon said bullish Bitcoin sentiment won’t hurt either.

Cryptocurrency prices are broadly rising in 2024 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved nearly a dozen spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. In just over a month, new ETFs have seen record inflows.

Shannon joined other analysts in pointing to several successful airdrops; that independent validators, including Firedancer, will "improve the redundancy of the network" and help prevent future outages; and that hopeful The Bitcoin market is the reason Solana continues to rise.

Shannon noted in a blog post on Monday that The on-chain order book system being developed by Solana may dominate The status of Ethereum poses a potential blow.

Shannon said that the new order book feature will provide a better user experience and better performance than rival Ethereum’s “hybrid or off-chain” order book. protocol capital efficiency and greater transparency, thereby “dramatically [improving] the user experience.”

Messari's Kel Eleje

For Solana's several outages (the most recent of which occurred earlier this month), Investors have been forgiving.

The Solana token fell 4% following the news before rebounding to over $110.

Messari analyst Kel Eleje pointed out: "This is an early stage network and there should be outages."

He pointed out that Since the launch of Solana, there have been an overall reduction in outages and significant improvements in network speeds.

Since 2021, Solana’s transactions per second have increased nearly fivefold, from 200 to 900, far faster than Ethereum’s 12 transactions per second Transactions or Bitcoin 7 transactions per second.

"The trend is favorable," Eleje  said.

According to Eleje, growth will be fueled by “breakthrough applications” native to Solana, such as NFT placement platform DRiP and decentralized wireless network project Helium, which recently migrated to Solana.

Helium also works with Solana’s Saga mobile device. Saga owners have received regular free airdrops, such as BONK in December.

Solana users are also looking forward to more airdrops to drive growth by the end of 2023.

Eleje pointed to new, releasable clients such as Firedancer, Sig, and Agave, which are designed to improve network scalability.

Raoul Pal of Real Vision

Entrepreneur Raoul Pal thinks Solana will go even higher.

Pal is co-founder and CEO of financial research platform Real Vision, with one million followers on X.

Pal said in an interview with SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci this month thatSolana will rise to a price between $750 and $1,000 and will eventually become the third largest cryptocurrency in the space. Token, second only to Bitcoin and Ethereum.

"It has performed relatively well" compared to the other two cryptocurrencies, he said.

VanEck

In October, ETF provider VanEck gave a valuation scenario, Solana is expected to cost as high as $3,211.28 and as low as $10 by 2030.

VanEck’s so-called base case assumption for Solana is $335, based on estimated cash flows from token holders. That's three times the current price.

But the company said the number could have been larger if it had surpassed rival Ethereum to become the leading DeFi back then.

However, VanEck said, “Solana is less likely than Ethereum to host the majority of the world’s cryptocurrency transactions by 2030.”

The company Still noted that the network has room to grow and is expected to be adopted by new developers and venture capitalists.

"Meaningful weighting of SOL in investor portfolios is justified."

Fundstrat Sean Farrell

Despite the gains, Solana is less than halfway to its 2021 all-time high of $260.

At the time, Solana was known as “Sam Coin,” a reference to convicted FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who backed Solana and the Solana project. The 2022 FTX crash caused Solana’s price to drop by 97%, making it one of the hardest-hit assets in the bear market.

Since then, its price has soared 1,065%. To reach an all-time high, it would need to rise approximately 130% from current prices.

“We’ve seen record highs this year,” noted Fundstrat Global Advisors analyst Sean Farrell.

Today, Solana hovers around $109.