Solana February 2024 Recap: SOL Price Analysis and Ecosystem Review

Find out all you need to know about the Solana ecosystem and SOL price action in February 2024 in this comprehensive report.

About Solana

Founded in 2017 by Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana is an open-source blockchain platform focused on scalability and speed. It aims to outperform existing blockchains in transaction processing without compromising on cost-effectiveness.Solana achieves this through a unique Layer 1 network architecture, allowing it to handle over 710,000 transactions per second (TPS).

This architecture also facilitates the creation of smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps), making it suitable for various use cases like decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) marketplaces.

Launched in 2020 after extensive testing, Solana stands out from platforms like Ethereum by avoiding the need for additional scaling solutions. Instead, it utilizes powerful and fast computers to maintain the network and manage data storage. SOL, the native cryptocurrency of Solana, plays a crucial role in enabling transactions and securing the network through staking.

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the Solana ecosystem in February 2024, analyzing SOL price performance, ecosystem developments, and updates.

Solana On-chain Data and SOL Price Performance

Solana’s daily transaction volume has seen a significant increase, rising from 22.1 million on Feb. 6 to 33.7 million on Feb. 26. This rise in activity suggests growing engagement and use of the Solana blockchain. However, by the end of the month, the daily transaction volume dropped once more, reaching 28.5 million.

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Solana’s total value locked (TVL) has reached $2.5 billion, which represents a 30% increase year-to-date. In comparison, Ethereum’s TVL grew by 15% during the same period, and BNB Chain saw a 12% increase in BNB deposits since Dec. 31, 2023.

The outage of Solana’s Mainnet was caused by a complication with legacy programs, as detailed in Solana’s comprehensive report compiled by Anza.

Engineers from across the ecosystem are investigating an outage on mainnet-beta. This thread will be updated as more information becomes available https://t.co/rfeioQ6BG9

— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) February 6, 2024

The SOL price fluctuated throughout February. After dropping to $95 on Feb. 4, it rebounded by more than 27%, reaching about $130 by the end of the month.

SOL/USD price index. Source: TradingView

Two factors fueled SOL’s price increase: various airdrops and the network’s perceived advantages in terms of affordability and ease of use compared to its competitors.

Despite its recent outage, Solana boasts faster development and upgrade implementation compared to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible networks. While the February outage caused exchanges to halt SOL and Solana SPL token transactions and impacted DApp usage, it didn’t significantly affect the SOL price, potentially due to Solana’s faster development cycles.

Solana Ecosystem Updates And Acquisitions

Solana Mobile’s Chapter 2 smartphone reached 100,000 preorders on Feb. 12, less than 30 days after registration was opened. The smartphones will start shipping in early 2025. In comparison, it took Solana almost a year to sell 20,000 of its first Solana Saga smartphones.

100,000 preorders in less than 30 days

We’re floored by the demand and truly grateful for the overwhelming support

Now that we’ve hit this milestone, the Founder Window & preorder price of $450 will close in 48 hours. Your chance to join is now!

https://t.co/nYR9apGGIT pic.twitter.com/9L224igXcL

— Solana Mobile 2⃣ (@solanamobile) February 12, 2024

​​Helius, a platform developing tools for Solana blockchain developers, secured $9.5 million in funding. The company plans to use the funds to hire more engineers, improve its technology, and onboard more developers to the Solana ecosystem.

Tools for Humanity, the main developer behind the Worldcoin project, announced the acquisition of Ottr Finance, a Solana-based digital wallet startup. Ottr Wallet will cease operations as the company focuses on supporting Tools for Humanity in building the Worldcoin project.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, CMCC Global and 468 Capital participated in a $25-million Series A investment in crypto mobile payment firm Oobit. Oobit wants to make it easier for consumers to purchase goods and services using cryptocurrency.

Solana also collaborated with Filecoin, a decentralized data storage marketplace, to enhance the reliability and scalability of the Solana blockchain. As part of the partnership, Solana will leverage Filecoin’s infrastructure to improve data redundancy, scalability and security while reinforcing Solana’s commitment to decentralization.

Solana’s integration with #Filecoin is a significant move away from centralized storage solutions and a remarkable step towards enhancing the reliability and scalability of the Solana blockchain.@solana is utilizing Filecoin to make its block history more accessible and usable… pic.twitter.com/1NcuaLNYT5

— Filecoin (@Filecoin) February 16, 2024

Moreover, the Solana Foundation launched a global hackathon called Renaissance for Web3 developers as well. The hackathon will take place from March 4 to April 8, 2024, and participants can compete for a share of a $1 million prize pool and pre-seed funding.

Solana Meme Coins

Following SOL’s price gains, several meme coins built on the Solana blockchain, including Bonk (BONK) and DogWifHat (WIF), also saw significant increases in trading activity during the last week of February.

The prices of BONK and WIF grew by 110% and 250%, respectively, since Feb. 23, reaching $0.00002364 and $0.856420 on Feb. 29. The BONK price saw an uptick following the news about a possible listing on the Revolut trading platform.

The proposed collaboration would see Revolut launch a “Learn and Earn Campaign” aimed at attracting 500,000 new users to the Bonk ecosystem. With 38 million users in over 50 countries, Revolut’s involvement could significantly expand Bonk’s user base if the partnership is realized.

#Revolut plans to list #BONK and launch a $1.2M campaign to educate users about the meme coin. Approval vote expected to pass. #crypto #Solana

Follow and stay tuned!

— Learn2Earn (@Learn2Earnify) February 14, 2024

A new Solana-based and dragon-themed coin, Smog (SMOG), which was launched on Jupiter DEX on Feb. 7, is also experiencing increased interest. Its price jumped over 3,000% upon release, attracting over 30,000 holders. The project is currently offering staking rewards and planning an airdrop to distribute a portion of its token supply to the community.

Solana Airdrops and DEXs

Following the lucrative JUP airdrop by the Jupiter exchange in January, the Solana blockchain is now home to several projects with the potential to replicate this success.

Drift Protocol, an open-sourced decentralized exchange (DEX), Parcl, a decentralized real estate trading protocol, and Zeta, a decentralized derivatives exchange, emerged as Solana’s leading projects poised for upcoming airdrops, offering innovative opportunities for user participation in DeFi.

Drift Protocol

With a significant $3.8 million in seed funding and a subsequent $23.5 million Series A round, Drift has proven its position as a heavyweight in the DeFi space. Drift has introduced “Drift Trader Points”. This is a system that rewards users for their activities on the platform, including trading volume and liquidity provision. The program will conclude at the end of March with a snapshot of past activities already taken; users will be rewarded at the end of the season for their activities, insurance fund staking and super staking.

Drift’s TVL reached $182,7 million in February 2024. Source: DefiLlama

On Feb.13, Drift saw a massive $300 million daily trading volume and an all-time high in active users. Its TVL stood at an impressive $182,7 million on Feb. 29.

Parcl

Parcl announced the launch of its governance and utility token, PRCL, with a focus on community engagement and future protocol functions. Moreover, Parcl experienced significant growth, boasting over 140,000 users and $111.2 million in TVL.

Parcl’s TVL reached $111 million in February 2024. Source: DefiLlama

Zeta

Zeta also announced its upcoming token launch in April. The project’s recent $8.5 million Series A funding round led by Jump Capital highlights the significant potential of the upcoming airdrop. This news, along with the already mentioned airdrop announcements from Drift and Parcl, makes April a promising month for Solana ecosystem participants.

Io.net

Io.net, a Solana-based decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) project focused on sourcing GPU computing power, also unveiled a rewards program in anticipation of its token launch.

Magnifi

Marginfi, a decentralized lending protocol on Solana with a TVL of $533,5 million, announced the completion of early development for its decentralized stablecoin, YBX, which is set to launch on the main net in late March.

1/ Introducing $YBX

A yield-bearing asset to capture base layer monetary policy

Here’s how it works pic.twitter.com/JNKAd4GyfY

— marginfi (@marginfi) February 28, 2024

Jupiter

Jupiter Exchange, the largest DEX aggregator on Solana, opened its LFG launchpad for applications. The Jupiter DAO, alongside JUP holders and the community, will be able to assess these applications to decide which project will be selected for the LFG launchpad listing.

Solana NFTs and Games

Solana was the third most popular blockchain network in the NFT ecosystem in February. Solana-based NFTs reached a new milestone, hitting $5 billion in all-time sales volume in February.

Data from CryptoSlam indicated that the sales volume for Solana-based NFTs in February reached $218 million. The data further revealed that the Solana network attracted around $433k buyers and 197k sellers of NFTs in February. The number of NFT transactions on Solana in February reached more than 3,8 million. This high volume of transactions highlights the increasing activity within the Solana NFT ecosystem.

However, a large part of the trading volume was generated by only a few collections (e.g. Froganas, Tensorians, MadRug).

Solana trending NFT collections in February 2024. Source: Dune

Tensor has rapidly ascended to become Solana’s leading NFT marketplace, commanding over 70% of Solana’s NFT trading volume. With $3 million in seed funding, Tensor’s valuation is speculated to be closer to Blur, Ethereum’s top NFT marketplace, signaling a solid market position.

During the last couple of months, Tensor has surpassed Blur’s trading volume on a number of occasions, highlighting Tensor’s growing influence and potential valuation.

BREAKING: Solana’s dominance trend continues, Tensor flipped @blur_io in 24 hours NFT trading volume.

Tensor: $14 millionBlur: $12 million pic.twitter.com/scWKEh8pt3

— SolanaFloor | Powered by Step Finance (@SolanaFloor) December 16, 2023

Solana-based Web3 racing game MixMob secured the licensing rights for the Original Stormtrooper from the Star Wars franchise. This collaboration will integrate the character into MixMob: Racer 1 through unique NFTs. This acquisition is part of MixMob’s ongoing strategy to secure additional licenses in 2024.

Transdimensional Fox Federation, an NFT collection featuring a fixed supply of 7,779 NFTs hosted on the Solana blockchain network, was the seventh most-selling NFT collection in February.

Notable Solana NFT launches in February

Looking Ahead – Will SOL’s Price Continue to Ascend?

The Solana ecosystem experienced notable developments and challenges in February 2024. Solana’s TVL reached a significant milestone of $2.5 billion, marking a 30% year-to-date increase.

The SOL price also saw a new high of $130 on February 29. This was driven by several airdrops and perceived advantages in affordability and ease of use of the Solana blockchain. Despite a five-hour network outage on February 6, Solana demonstrated resilience, with its daily transaction volume reflecting growing engagement.

Solana’s ecosystem showcased diverse advancements, including the successful preorders of Solana Mobile’s Chapter 2 smartphone and Helius securing $9.5 million in Series A funding. Partnerships with Filecoin and the launch of the Renaissance hackathon emphasized Solana’s commitment to innovation and collaboration within the Web3 space.

The meme coin sector on Solana witnessed increased trading activity, notably in DogWifHat, Bonk, and the newly launched Smog. These coins experienced significant price surges, reflecting the dynamic nature of the Solana blockchain. DEXs on Solana emerged as leading projects with promising airdrops, attracting substantial funding and user participation.

Solana’s NFT ecosystem flourished, reaching a new milestone of $5 billion in all-time sales volume, with Tensor dominating as the leading NFT marketplace.

Despite challenges, including the network outage and concentrated trading volume in certain NFT collections, Solana remains a vibrant and evolving ecosystem. Especially with ongoing developments in DeFi, gaming, and NFTs shaping its trajectory in 2024.

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