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Undoubtedly, 2022 was not one of the best years for Solana (SOL). The cryptocurrency that arrived on the crypto market with promises of being an "Ethereum killer" has had a lot of performance difficulties in the last 12 months. But will everything be different for the altcoin in 2023?
Sad story of Solana in 2022
This year the market has seen SOL's price fluctuate after each outage that Solana's network has experienced. This has led to distrust around crypto. After all, how could it be prepared to outperform the market's top altcoin if its network does not work?
Although it was chosen as the preferred token after Ethereum for launching non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain games, Solana's network proved unstable when heavily used. In addition, centralization was another negative highlight, as was always seen when developers paralyzed SOL blockchain to fix a bug.
As if that was not enough of a problem for the smart contracts platform, Solana has been negatively impacted by the fall of FTX and Alameda Research. The companies of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) were influential in Solana's growth.
SBF, in addition to being a big crypto advocate saying that Solana is an underrated altcoin, has allowed Alameda to acquire $1.2 billion on SOL.
As of the time of writing, the bankrupt trading company holds 48.6 million units of the token. That figure represents 65% of all tokens in staking and 8.75% of Solana's total outstanding.
All of this proximity to one of the biggest scandals of 2022 has caused the cryptocurrency to drop out of the top 10 and caused investors to lose a lot of money.
May Solana's situation change in 2023?
Looking back over Solana’s history, its constant network outages were no reason for the cryptocurrency to lose a lot of capital. Even though it corrected, its place in the top 10 by market capitalization was not lost.
Therefore, even if the altcoin may still face more difficulties until it has a 100% functional blockchain, this may not be a bearish catalyst for it.
Another positive point about Solana is that it has a growing number of active developers. This proves that its network has not been left behind, even if investors are wary of Alameda's next steps.
A fast blockchain, when not failing, with low transaction fees, accessible language for building smart contracts and a good volume of development can show that Solana still has hope.
However, by 2023, the altcoin will have to engage in new modalities of the blockchain industry and fix its network.
In addition to having important competitors such as Cardano (ADA) and Polkadot (DOT), investors should be much more demanding next year. With the fall of NFTs, Solana's main highlight, the need to reinvent itself, is necessary so that it does not fall into the crypto graveyard.
Solana entered an important return risk zone as it passed an all-time high of $260 in 2021 and reached the final month of 2022 trading below the $15 mark.
By managing to develop in ways that minimize pressure from tokens held by Alameda, Solana could be the cryptocurrency to watch in 2023.
Alex Dovbnya
Valeria Blokhina
