Solana surges to all-time high of $175, off the back of “Ignition” event
Solana’s ongoing rally has seen the project bag monthly gains of over 230%.
- SOL recently scaled up to its all-time high value of $126, albeit briefly.
- Analysts believe that Solana’s rally can, in part, be attributed to the project’s ability to provide investors with seamless access to the non-fungible token (NFT) market.
- The fourth iteration of the Ignition Hackathon, which is being hosted by the Solana team, kicked off earlier today.
Despite the market witnessing little to no real activity over the last 24 hours, decentralized computing platform Solana reeled in major profits, with the price of SOL hitting a new all-time high of $126. Solana soared by a whopping 30% earlier today, taking its weekly gains to a little over 60%. That said, at press time, the token’s value has showcased a visible correction, trading at $114.
As a result of its ongoing surge, Solana has broken into the top 10 list of crypto projects by total market capitalization, with the currency’s valuation rising to a respectable $32 billion just a year and a half after making its market debut. Year-to-date, SOL’s collective gains stand at a staggering 10x, eclipsing returns delivered by other prominent projects, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Cardano.
Solana’s stunning rally comes in the wake of a so-called altcoin boom that has seen a number of Ethereum alternatives take off in a big way. Solana is a blockchain-based ecosystem that offers support for smart contracts and allows users to gain seamless access to the NFT and DeFi markets.
According to London-based cryptocurrency trader and analyst, Jonas Luethy, Solana’s massive rally can, in large part, be attributed to the platform’s ability to streamline NFT access for its users. Throughout August 2021, the global NFT sales surged past the $900 million mark, which is three times the previous all-time high achieved back in May.
Ignition hackathon kicks off
Ignition, a global hackathon hosted by the Solana Foundation, recently kicked off, offering winners up to $5 million in prizes and grants. This is the fourth iteration of the event, with this year’s version focusing primarily on niche domains including Web3, DeFi, gaming and NFTs. The event is open to teams from around the globe and will go live in select cities.
The last Ignition Hackathon, which took place earlier this year in the summer, attracted a total of 13,000 registrations along with 350+ project submissions. Not only that, a little over 50 projects that had been built atop Solana accrued sizeable investor funding as part of the event.
The Ignition Hackathon 2021 will be sponsored by a host of mainstream tech and financial entities, including Microsoft, Jump Trading, Standard Chartered, Serum, Mango and Chainlink, among others – with the “Grand Champion” winning $75,000 in USD coin. Speakers and judges at the event will include well-known crypto personalities, including Jeremy Allaire, Amy Wu, Ali Yayha and 0xMaki.
Looking ahead
Even though Solana’s price has increased by a sizeable 230% since the start of the year, the currency did plummet by nearly 60% just a couple of months back when China implemented its blanket mining ban. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how things play out from here for Solana.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner’s guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
