Solana (SOL) and What May Help Altcoin Maintain Bullish Performance

As noted over the past few days, Solana (SOL) has once again become of interest to some cryptocurrency investors. Last week, the altcoin's market capitalization rose 37%. However, much of that increase came through a meme altcoin.

Bonk (BONK) has been drawing attention in the very first days of 2023. In short, this altcoin is another blockchain meme and is seen as major market speculation. However, it has one small peculiarity.

According to the project's website, the token on SOL's network was developed to disassociate Alameda Research's image from Solana, bringing liquidity back to the “Ethereum killer” ecosystem.

Without a doubt, this is an atypical fact. After all, it is an altcoin meme that is responsible for making one of the biggest projects in decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) go up, while serious projects with fundamentals do not and did not have that strength in 2022, even before the scandal in Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) empire.

But there is a huge likelihood that Bonk will not maintain that hype for long. That is because, overall, the world is experiencing a major lack of liquidity, and there is not infinite money to put into a meme altcoin, further strengthening the concept that there is a great deal of speculation surrounding the token.

What could make Solana keep growing?

First, it should be noted that this bullish performance by SOL might end at any moment, as the bulls have yet to return to the cryptocurrency market. Therefore, in the short term, the altcoin may experience some correction.

With that in mind, we can move on to the positive side. In fact, 2023 could be a good year for Solana. One of the steps that should be taken in the coming months is toward improving the smart contract platform's network.

Last year, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, said he was aware of the problems of cryptocurrency outages. He stated that the second validator client may be what crypto needs to have a long-term improvement.

The new feature will have a separate software development team. As such, the likelihood of them having the same errors in their code becomes almost zero, according to Yakovenko.

If Solana gets a more robust network, this may help bring interest from more developers, who will bring more projects that will result in more users of the network. This movement can help a lot in capitalizing Solana.

Of course, it is a great achievement by Solana and should be a source of pride. Even with the great interest surrounding BONK, the altcoin has managed to hold its own and its network has remained stable, something that did not happen with other projects that attracted attention on SOL's network in the past — like the NFT game SolChicks, for example.

But that is not all

Even with all the difficulties of the past year, Solana still has one of the networks with the cheapest transaction fees. Moreover, its user experience, for the developer and the everyday crypto investor, is incredibly good. A fitting example of this is Solana's Phantom wallet, which has one of the best usages on the blockchain.

Moreover, the altcoin's presence on DeFi remains high. Its decentralized exchange (DEX), Orca, is the highest volume after DEXs on the Ethereum (ETH) network. While Solana appearing in only 11th place when it comes to the chain with the highest total value locked (TVL) may seem like a bad thing, it just shows how it might grow, given that Solana was once one of the biggest in the top 10.

Development activity on ETH's competing blockchain has also increased, according to Santiment data, and social volume on Solana's networks is also on the rise. In other words, improvements should be seen in the altcoin in the coming months, and the crypto community is showing interest in the cryptocurrency.