Amidst fluctuating market dynamics, Solana [SOL] has emerged as a resilient force, demonstrating commendable growth and stability. A recent financial analysis conducted by Messari has provided compelling insights into SOL’s performance during the third quarter of 2023. During this period, SOL, the native token of the Solana network, faced a significant challenge when the SEC focused its regulatory attention on major exchanges like Coinbase and Binance, categorizing SOL as a security along with other assets.
Like many other cryptocurrencies, SOL experienced a sharp decline in value, plummeting by 34% at the close of Q2. Despite this setback, the altcoin demonstrated remarkable resilience compared to its counterparts. As Q3 commenced, SOL not only recovered from the dip but also showcased a noteworthy 17% increase in its market capitalization, surpassing $8 billion. This surge propelled SOL from the 10th to the 7th position in terms of market capitalization rankings.
A closer look at the network analysis reveals Solana’s robust transaction system. Throughout the third quarter, it maintained steady and affordable transaction fees, standing at an average of $0.0002 per non-vote transaction. Innovative features like priority fees played a crucial role in curbing network spam and ensuring smooth operations, preventing popular contracts from congesting the network.
Solana’s security and decentralization efforts also showed positive trends. The total staked SOL increased by 2% to reach 405 million, placing Solana firmly in second place, just behind Ethereum, in terms of total staking market cap. Despite a slight decrease in the Nakamoto coefficient, an industry-leading metric measuring network resilience, Solana’s validator network remained robust and reliable.
Solana Network Outage Recovery
One of the standout achievements of the quarter was Solana’s impressive track record of uptime. The network approached its all-time high in days since an outage, a testament to the effectiveness of recent upgrades and technical enhancements, including QUIC, stake-weighted Quality of Service [QoS], and local fee markets.
In the realm of decentralized finance [DeFi], Solana experienced a significant boost with a 32% increase in total value locked [TVL], reaching $368 million. This growth was driven by the launch of various DeFi and liquid staking protocols, such as MarginFi, Jito, Cypher, and BlazeStake, which introduced innovative point programs to attract users.
Despite concerns surrounding the potential liquidation of over 57 million SOL tokens held by FTX, SOL’s market cap defied the odds, growing by 17% QoQ. FTX/Alameda’s SOL holdings are subject to specific unlock schedules, providing assurance to the market. As the bear market looms, Solana’s robust network and thriving ecosystem position it to emerge even stronger, showcasing the resilience and potential of this cutting-edge blockchain platform.