Can Solana Reach $260 Again? What Five Experts Say?

• The Solana token is up 350% over the past year, thanks in part to several large token airdrops.

• A network outage on February 6 did not stop Solana’s rally, which has since risen by 20%.

• Analysts and experts share what will drive Solana in 2024.

There has been some volatility recently, but Solana is up 390% over the past year.

Its $4.9 billion NFT market is approaching rival Ethereum in terms of transaction volume.

Despite some glitches, including an hours-long network outage on February 6, its SOL token has rebounded.

But Solana has failed to keep pace with the surging prices of Ethereum and Bitcoin, and has remained relatively flat since rising to $103 following the outage.

Here’s what five analysts think about the current state of Solana.

Max Shannon of CoinShares

CoinShares analyst Max Shannon said that “Solana remains the darling of crypto,” despite the hit it took after an outage in early February.

Shannon said bullish sentiment towards Bitcoin doesn’t hurt either.

Cryptocurrency prices generally rose in 2024 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved nearly a dozen spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. In just over a month, the new ETFs saw record inflows.

Shannon joined other analysts in pointing to several successful airdrops; independent validators, including Firedancer, which will “improve the redundancy of the network” and help prevent future outages; and a hopeful Bitcoin market as reasons for Solana’s continued upside.

In a blog post on Monday, Shannon noted that the on-chain order book system Solana is developing could pose a potential blow to dominant Ethereum.

Shannon said the new order book feature will “dramatically [improve] the user experience” by providing a better user experience, better capital efficiency for the protocol, and more transparency compared to rival Ethereum’s “hybrid or off-chain” order books.

Kel Eleje of Messari

Investors have been forgiving of Solana’s several outages, the most recent of which occurred earlier this month.

Solana token dropped 4% following the news before rebounding to over $110.

“This is an early-stage network and disruptions are to be expected,” said Messari analyst Kel Eleje.

He noted that since Solana’s launch, there have been an overall decrease in outages and significant increases in network speeds.

Since 2021, Solana’s transactions per second have increased nearly fivefold, from 200 to 900, far faster than Ethereum’s 12 transactions per second or Bitcoin’s 7 transactions per second.

“The trend is favorable,” Eleje said.

According to Eleje, growth will be fueled by “breakthrough applications” native to Solana, such as NFT placement platform DRiP and Helium, a decentralized wireless network project that recently migrated to Solana.

Helium is also working with Solana’s Saga mobile device. Saga owners have received regular free airdrops, such as BONK in December.

Solana users also expect more airdrops to drive growth by the end of 2023.

Eleje pointed to new, releasable clients such as Firedancer, Sig, and Agave, which are designed to improve network scalability.

Raoul Pal of Real Vision

Entrepreneur Raoul Pal thinks Solana will go even higher.

Pal is the co-founder and CEO of financial research platform Real Vision and has one million followers on X.

In an interview this month with SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci, Pal said Solana’s price will rise to between $750 and $1,000 and will eventually become the third-largest token in the cryptocurrency space, behind only Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Compared to the other two cryptocurrencies, “it’s been a relative outperformer,” he said.

VanEck

In October, ETF provider VanEck gave a valuation scenario that predicted Solana’s price would be as high as $3,211.28 and as low as $10 by 2030.

VanEck’s so-called base case for Solana, based on estimated cash flows to token holders, is $335. That’s three times the current price.

But the company said that number could be even larger if it is able to surpass rival Ethereum and become the leading DeFi token by then.

However, VanEck said that “it is less likely than Ethereum that Solana will host a majority of the world’s cryptocurrency transactions by 2030.”

Still, the company noted that the network has room to grow and is expected to be adopted by new developers and venture capitalists.

“A meaningful weighting of SOL in an investor’s portfolio is warranted.”

Sean Farrell of Fundstrat

Despite the gains, Solana is less than halfway to its 2021 all-time high of $260.

At the time, Solana was known as “Sam’s Coin,” a reference to convicted FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who supported Solana and the Solana project. The 2022 FTX crash caused Solana’s price to drop 97%, making it one of the hardest-hit assets in the bear market.

Since then, its price has surged 1,065%. To reach a new all-time high, it would need to rise about 130% from its current price.

“We’ve seen all-time highs this year,” noted Sean Farrell, an analyst at Fundstrat Global Advisors.

Today, Solana is hovering around $109.