Solana has had an impressive year. After worrying declines in late 2022, a rebound in the second half of 2023 has pushed the platform into the top five.
At spot rates, not only is the SOL token rising, with the original token rising 100% over the past 10 months, but the network is now a meme hub. Solana is the third largest smart contract platform after Ethereum and BNB Chain.
Considering how quickly SOL has expanded over the years, there is a high possibility that the coin is undervalued. There are multiple factors that support this view. Moving on to X, one analyst notes that Solana is approaching or has already exceeded levels of metrics closely monitored by the community.
Solana Explosion: Revenue, TVL Rising
Citing data from the analyst Artemis He said Solana is quickly approaching the $12.5 million revenue mark. Solana’s revenues have been steadily increasing over the past few weeks and for much of October.
As in all general ledgers, revenue is derived from gas fees. The more blockchain activity, the more fees users pay to transfer tokens or deploy smart contracts. Notably, revenues, according to Artemis data, have been rising steadily since late 2022, stabilizing in the first half of 2023 before exploding in September 2023.
In addition to revenue, Solana has also recorded steady growth in total value locked (TVL). Simply put, TVL is an asset managed by all on-chain protocols. TVL has been gaining strength since late September and currently exceeds $6 billion. However, it is still below the $10 billion recorded in October 2021.
So far, DeFiLlama data reveals Solana DeFi protocols manage $6.2 billion. The largest is Jito, a liquid betting platform that controls more than $2.4 billion. On the other hand, one of the largest live trading platforms, Raydium, manages more than $1.4 billion in assets, up 28% from last month.
Meme activity surges, will SOL reach $200?
As TVL and revenue rose, the network saw impressive spikes in volume, reflecting on-chain participation, mostly from protocols like Raydium. Engagement is directly stimulated by coin activity, which spiked after Pump.fun was activated in January 2024.
On October 27, an analyst said Notice Solana has surpassed all blockchains, including Aptos, Injective, and Cardano, in weekly DEX trading volume. With over $15 billion in DEX trading volume over seven days, this represents a 150% increase over Ethereum.
Currently, SOL is trading at around $180. It’s down from $240, the high of 2024, and $260, set in 2021. Only time will tell if the coin will surpass the full $200 figure and soar to hit new 2024 highs in the next couple of months.
Featured image from Adobe Stock, chart from TradingView