The market is unfriendly to Solana (SOL) at the moment as the digital currency is down by 3.66% over the past 24 hours to $22.78. This price slump underscores the trend in a highly volatile market that still has a long way to go from the overdrawn crypto winter. Drawing on its current performance, Solana is now down by 8.40% over the trailing seven-day period.
Despite the bearish outlook of Solana at this time, two key ecosystem trends are notably sufficient to help it pull a comeback in the short term.
In what appears to be a correction of a misconception from the crypto data platform, TokenInsight, Solana community member @FlipsideSolana said the total number of developer activity on the Layer-1 network grew over the past couple of weeks.
He noted that the total number of new programs shot up in January, while many ecosystem activities have returned to pre-FTX bankruptcy levels. Besides these ecosystem upgrades and dApps onboarding, Solana is said to have a lot of new sign-ups for its hackathons that have the potential of bolstering a new era of smart contract growth on the protocol.
Unrelenting in race for superiority
Solana (SOL) is still regarded as one of the most active blockchain networks when it comes to functionality and developer support. With the race to outpace Ethereum as the dominant smart contract hub heating up, Solana's strategy is to empower new functional applications that can duly serve its community.
Bonk (BONK), a meme coin, made waves earlier in the year as it fueled hype that helped place the Solana protocol on a new level in the crypto ecosystem. Today, the hype has waned, and developers on the protocol are being encouraged to float more time-tested and economically sustainable smart contracts moving forward.