Solana, which trades for 246.71 USD at the time of writing and is now the fourth-largest cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap, has had an incredible year. In comparison, SOL was ranked towards the bottom of the top 100 list at the start of the year.
The trading price of the layer one native token at the start of the year was 1.84 USD. This equates to a 13,300 percent gain for HODLers who purchased SOL at that time. SOL temporarily achieved its current all-time high of 258.85 USD yesterday.
The project raised 314 million USD in a private token sale in June. Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain, and, most importantly, Alameda Research were among the investors. The latter, a quant trading firm created by FTX.com CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, has made significant contributions to Solana’s DeFi ecosystem, including the launch of the decentralized exchange Serum.
The increased buzz surrounding non-fungible tokens also contributed to one of crypto’s biggest success stories this year. The Phantom wallet for Solana, which currently has over one million active users, includes a useful feature that allows users to view their NFTs from within the wallet interface without than having to rely on an NFT marketplace or any other third-party site.
As the Solana ecosystem continues to expand, NFTs on Solana have seen formidable growth.
Total NFT secondary sales volume on @solana has officially reached $500 million, doing so in just three months. pic.twitter.com/F9hPQTzd7L
— Mason Nystrom (@masonnystrom) November 2, 2021
As a result, Solana has become one of the go-to blockchains for NFT projects that are put off by Ethereum’s hefty gas fees. Solana is the second most popular blockchain for NFTs, trailing only Ethereum, with secondary NFT sales totaling more than 500 million USD in the last month.
