Solana [SOL] positions itself as the 6th-largest crypto-asset after surpassing XRP

Solana [SOL] has emerged as one of the hottest cryptocurrencies of late. The abrupt plunge in Bitcoin’s [BTC] price dragged the entire market into a sea of red. A sentiment of uncertainty has engulfed the crypto world. Investors expect bearishness in the next couple of trading sessions as top alts flashed sell signals. But not Solana.

SOL managed to weather the storm and record massive weekly gains of 78.88%. As a matter of fact, the crypto-asset was up by 35.64% over the past day alone. It was now trading at $208.5, according to the latest data on CoinMarketCap. Boasting a total market cap of $60.84 billion, SOL even blasted past XRP and was now the sixth-largest cryptocurrency. This comes just a day after it surpassed popular meme-coin Dogecoin [DOGE] to position itself on the 7th rank by market cap.

Among the top 10 cryptocurrencies, Solana was the best-performing asset as it decoupled from Bitcoin. XRP and DOGE, on the other hand, have failed to no impressive rallies as they continued closely mimick the price action of the king coin.

NFT boom backing Solana’s rally?

With a massive parabolic run-up, SOL’s price continued to exceed all expectations. One of the main drivers is the thriving sector of non-fungible tokens of NFTs. A major chunk of NFT-related transactions occurs on the Ethereum blockchain. However, the network suffers from higher congestion and inflated gas fees which has paved the way for alternative layer one solutions to take the stage.

Solana is one of them. Owing to its public base-layer blockchain protocol that aims to address inefficiencies and eliminates Ethereum’s performance bottlenecks, the SOL ecosystem and its reduced gas fees have catalyzed its case as an emerging player in the NFT space. Additionally, Solana’s integration with the NFT marketplace of the prominent crypto derivatives platform FTX has further strengthened its position in the industry.