Solana nears $100 as meme coin frenzy continues to drive rally

Solana’s SOL neared $100 early Friday as ongoing hype for the blockchain’s speedy transactions, cheap fees and a lottery of meme coin issuances extended into its third week.

Metrics show Solana has possibly been the strongest draw among on-chain traders, with trading volumes and network fees crossing those of Ethereum – which is usually the highest – on a seven-day rolling basis.

Value locked on Solana applications grew in tandem, rising to $1.3 billion worth of tokens from the $400 million mark in November to reach levels previously seen in July 2022.

These factors have apparently helped extend year-to-date gains for SOL to over 830%, with most growth in the past two months alone. The buying pressure has sustained even amid significant selling pressure from the bankruptcy estate of crypto exchange FTX, which held billions of dollars worth of SOL. The token was trading around $94 during the European morning, according to CoinDesk Indices data.

Dog-themed bonk (BONK) apparently revived attention with a more than 1,000% jump in late November. That inspired a flurry of meme coins, such as dogwifhat (WIF), which yielded some early retail buyers with gains of over 10,000% in a short period.

WIF added another 35% to market capitalization in the past 24 hours alone, showing no signs of stoppage amid significant hype in crypto circles on X.

Data shows thousands of meme coins have since been issued by opportunistic developers. Most of these run up from a very low market capitalization to a few million.

Solana-based meme coins issued in the past 24 hours. (Birdeye)

Meanwhile, some analysts expect SOL’s outperformance to continue in the weeks ahead, pointing to the possible interest from retail investors as a driver of token growth.

“Solana is recovering more steadily than most major competitors and shows more interest in it in the community, which promises to keep its performance above the market in the coming months,”

“Google searches on Solana have soared 250% in the past two months,” shared Alex Kuptsikevich, FxPro senior market analyst, in a Friday note to CoinDesk. “User interest has coincided with the explosive growth of the asset and rising prices of related meme coins.”

“The Solana blockchain continues to grow strongly with the background of new protocols and related airdrops,” Kuptsikevich added, referring to the BONK, ACS and JTO airdrops to Solana users in the past weeks.