In 2022, a wide range of assets saw severe revisions. Unquestionably, Solana [SOL] was one among them. SOL experienced a 94 percent year-to-date [YTD] decline, compared to a 60–70% decline for the majority of crypto assets. SOL became one of the greatest losers of 2022 as a result of this.
Since its debut, SOL has been the topic of the cryptocurrency community. The network received praise for its quick transactions and inexpensive costs. Many chose the item and thought it was a wise investment.
Although many believed that the FTX upheaval ended the asset’s winning streak, the head of strategy and communications for the SOL foundation believes otherwise.
Austin Federa, head of strategy and communications at the Solana Foundation, claims that despite the failure of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, the Solana network continues to draw users and developers. Federa stated to local media on Tuesday that despite the FTX infection, the network has experienced a rise in on-chain activity.
She went onto say,
“What you’ve seen is real staying power for both users and developers to build on the network.”
Sam Bankman-Fried, the now-disgraced founder of the insolvent FTX, was a vocal supporter of SOL. In fact, according to a blog post published by Solana in November, FTX and Alameda Research, a related trading company that Bankman-Fried also owned, bought SOL tokens from the foundation and its sister company Solana Labs more than $58 million after the platform went live with a test network.
Federa claimed that the “initial attention” was beneficial and may have aided in the network’s growth and current unrest since other SOL-based decentralized finance (DeFi) projects left the ecosystem.
Solana’s Bonk, An Adding Factor?
Federa claimed that despite the exit of non-fungible tokens (NFT) projects like DeGods and Y00ts, developers are still signing up for the network. Federa cited the NFT startup Bonk (BONK), whose “airdrop” saw a significant amount of its tokens distributed to Solana users and resulted in a Tuesday 20% increase in SOL.
She further added,
“You’re not really seeing any projects migrate off of Solana that need the performance and power of the network……. There’s a lot of stuff that you can only build on Solana, and those developers are continuing to build here.”