Solana (SOL) is facing strong resistance near all-time highs (ATH), but solid fundamentals and impressive growth in the DeFi and NFT ecosystem are likely to push it above $ 250 this year.

SOL / USDT 1-day chart | Source: TradingView

Institutional interest could be a major contributor to SOL’s 490% increase since August; for example, SOL is the fourth largest component of the Bitwise 10 Cryptocurrency Index Fund, a $ 1.3 billion OTC market instrument.

DeFi is gaining traction

Solana’s two best-known DeFi projects are decentralized exchanges (DEXs) with built-in profitable programs, and they each hold nearly $ 2 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL).

Saber is an automated market making protocol (AMM) that trades between stable pairs and synthetic assets while providing returns to the platform’s liquidity providers. Raydium now has DEX, yield farming and liquidity pools.

According to the report, proof of the appetite of institutional investors for Solana is the weekly cash flow of up to 12 million US dollars through mid-October. report recently from CoinShares. That same week, the US branch of the FTX exchange announced support for the Solana blockchain, which enables users to trade, deposit and withdraw NFTs according to the Metaplex token standard.

SOL Futures Open Interest hits record high

This positive news flow was reflected in SOL’s derivatives markets, as shown by the following aggregated data for Open Interest (OI) futures:

Total SOL. Futures Open Interest | Source: Bybt

Open interest in SOL futures hit a record high of $ 1.86 billion on October 25, up 123% in 30 days. In a word, Cardano’s ADA and Polkadots DOT currently have an open interest of only $ 900 million.

This event isn’t necessarily a positive one, of course, as futures require both a long and a short side. However, the growing interest allowed even more players to participate.

Another positive factor is that DeFi protocols are maintaining $ 13.5 billion worth of TVL, even though it was severely impacted after a 17-hour network outage on September 14th and 15th.

TVL on Solana mạng | Source: DefiLama

The Solana Foundation claims that bots spammed the network when Grape launched its IDO on a Solana-based DEX, Raydium. This activity exceeded the network’s capacity by only 400,000 per second and required a coordinated fork of validators to bypass spam requests.

As long as Solana’s ecosystem grows, the network will remain a viable solution for DeFi and NFT applications looking for fast, cheap transactions. Both on-chain and derivatives market indicators signal that $ 250 is feasible by SOL by year-end.

Join Bitcoin Magazine Telegram to keep track of news and comment on this article: https://t.me/coincunews

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only, not investment advice. Investors should research carefully before making a decision. We are not responsible for your investment decisions.

Mr. Teacher

According to Cointelegraph

Follow the Youtube Channel | Subscribe to telegram channel | Follow the Facebook page