‘Ethereum Killer’ Solana hits another all time high — net worth surges to $30 billion

• Solana, also called the ‘Ethereum Killer’ hit an all time high of $124 at 5:30pm on August 31 Indian Standard Time (IST).
• The cryptocurrency which only made its debut 18 months ago is now the seventh largest player in the crypto market.
• Solana’s price has quadrupled over the last one month.

Solana, a cryptocurrency that provides decentralised finance (DeFi) solutions, is now among one of the most promising candidates to take down Ethereum’s dominance — at least according to the crypto community.

Its price hit an all time high of $124.58 on August 31 at 5:25 pm Indian Standard Time (IST). That's a four-fold increase over the last one month.

Change in Solana’s price


Source: Data from CoinMarketCap at 5:30 pm IST, calculations by Business Insider India

While other DeFi cryptocurrencies — like Cardano, Polkadot and Ethereum — have also surged, their rise has not been as massive as Solana’s. While it’s market value may not be as high, the cryptocurrency only made its debut 18 months ago and it’s already the seventh-largest player in the crypto market, according to data by CoinMarketCap.

Solana rise in value compared to its competitors in the DeFi space

Source: Data from CoinMarketCap at 5:30 pm IST, calculations by Business Insider India

Solana’s rally is being driven by the NFT hype

Solana is not the only part of the crypto universe seeing massive returns in the past one month. Sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in August clocked nearly $900 million.

OpenSea — the biggest platform for trading non-fungible tokens (NFTs) — hit an all time high, just like Solana. It saw $1.5 billion of trade volume in August across 14,000 unique wallet addresses.

NFT-project Cryptopunks, tiny little pixel art images worth thousands of dollars apiece, banked more than $200 million in lifetime sales since 2017 in August as well. And, that’s only one example. Penguins, monkeys, dinosaurs, you name it — if it’s an NFT, its value has probably increased in August.

Jonas Luethy, a trader at London-based cryptocurrency broker GlobalBlock, told Forbes that the hype of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the catalyst behind the rise of Solana.

It launched the Degenerate Ape Academy this month, which is a collection of pictures of cartoon apes. 10,000 of them sold out within the first 10 minutes of hitting the market. This led to a surge in Solana’s value since people needed the cryptocurrency to buy the apes.

Why is Solana called the ‘Ethereum Killer’?

Solana is also different from its competitors since it runs on the proof-of-history (PoH) method rather than on proof-of-work (PoW) like Bitcoin or proof-of-stake (PoS) like Cardano — and soon Ethereum.

Along with a differentiated methodology, the network promises that there won’t be any increased taxes and fees. Ethereum is trying to solve for its high gas fees in its latest update, the London Hard Fork, but the transaction fees are yet to stabilise.

These reasons make Solana cheaper and faster than Ethereum when it comes to executing smart contracts, and in turn, lure in investors as well as developers alike.

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