Solana takes on Ethereum in another metric in its bid to reach $200
According to on-chain data, Solana continued the bullish sentiment in its ecosystem to flip Ethereum on the stablecoin market for the second week in a row. SOL's price gains have slowed over the past week, -3% over the 7-day time frame at the time of writing. However, stablecoin transfers on the Solana chain show that the blockchain retains its reputation as an Ethereum killer, recording an increase in transaction volume of more than $10.3 billion last week.
Stablecoins are growing on Solana Ethereum has virtually dominated the stablecoin market since the inception of USDT. However, according to data from analytics platform Artemis, stablecoin trading volume on Solana surpassed Ethereum last week for the second week in a row, showing how quickly Solana is gaining traction. The network recorded $40.86 billion worth of stablecoin volume, compared to Ethereum's trading volume of $30.31 billion.
On-chain metrics since December demonstrate that SOL is quickly becoming the chain of choice for stablecoin usage and trading. Solana surpassed Ethereum in stablecoin volume for the first time in the week to December 25. During this period, SOL had weekly stablecoin trading volume of $103.01 billion, 12.14 billion more than Ethereum's $90.87 billion volume
Transfer volume | Source: Artemis
SOL also had a crazy run last year, gaining over 950% and recording a yearly high of $121. During this period, Solana competed strongly with Ethereum on many different metrics.
In particular, stablecoin trading volume increased by 2,213% in the 3-month time frame. The chain also saw 27.17 million stablecoin transactions in the same time frame, compared to Ethereum's 1.17 million transactions.
DeFi aggregator DeFiLlama saw DEX trading volume on Solana skyrocket to $28.13 billion in December, surpassing Ethereum L2 chains Arbitrum and Polygon. Solana also dethroned Ethereum in terms of NFT trading volume in early December.
Price SOL to $200?
The Solana ecosystem is expanding rapidly, as evidenced by skyrocketing prices and on-chain metrics. This bullish move can also be attributed to various airdrops and the hype around BONK, the first memecoin on Solana. As more people buy and trade SOL and other assets on this blockchain, demand for SOL will likely increase.
At the time of writing, SOL is trading at $100, down 7% and 3% over the past 24 hours and 7 days respectively. It is currently facing resistance at around $115 and failure to break above this price level will lead to further consolidation at the $100 support.
While there aren't any guarantees, SOL's strong fundamentals point to upside throughout the year and a path to revisiting $200 or even higher.
If SOL continues to surpass Ethereum and L2 Ethereum chains in key metrics and real-world utility development, $200 could come sooner than most investors expect.
