A Case for Solana in 2022

Solana (SOL) the best performing 'ETH killers' in 2021. Many wonder "When will SOL hit $1000? Will it really continue to pump? or will it slowly falter and fade away?". We're of the opinion that Solana's best days are still in the future.

Solana is an impressive altcoin because it is capable of a TPS of about 65,000. This TPS is comparable to that of Visa and MasterCard. This feature is intrinsic to Solana at very low transaction fees compared to BTC, ETH, and VISA itself.

This level of scalability of course comes with an associated cost. Solana's blockchain is scalable, decentralized but arguably less secure. Like other crypto blockchain's, they have to address the security side of scalability trilemma. More on how the team is handling that later.

by ResearchGate

Like most chains, Solana has shared in the downtrend that started at the beginning of the year that saw major cryptos shed up to 50% value.

Solana now boasts of a market capitalization of over $29 million and is currently trading and a price of about $92. This price is still 3X since its last rally which started mid-July 2021.

Notwithstanding the current state of affairs, there are several reasons why we think Solana is a 'must-have crypto asset' in 2022:

Solana is addressing performance issues & the associated concerns

Aaron Arnold, Altcoin Daily Host, predicted in a recent video that SOL is headed on a rebound in the next few weeks.

While making this interesting bet, Arnold points out that performance issues on the Solana network are being addressed. He's confident that after the next round of updates, the network will fortify its defense against DDOS attacks.

In recent months, DDOS attacks have occasionally overloaded the SOL network leading to substantial FUD. These concerns marked the beginning of a reversal in SOL's price rally. Recently, the co-founder of Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko, took to Twitter to calm the Solana community.

To address the general issue, engineers plan to introduce flow control in 1.9 with qos by stake weight, but now implementing this feature in 1.8 is the highest priority. The implementation uses quic to rate limit senders, and should be rolled out in the next 4-5 weeks.

Yakovenko revealed that upgrades are currently in progress to deal with spam messages, which had been flooding the network due to liquidator bots. Further, Yakovenko highlighted that SOL network engineers were planning to introduce flow control in update 1.9 by implementing quality of service (QoS) by stake weight. This way, the Solana BlockChain can handle duplicates gracefully.

News of this looming update has helped Solana's hopes for an uptrend, in spite of the current market downtrend. Certainly, this level of transparency by the Solana Labs team helps ease concerns by SOL holders. Most of these users are still hodling their SOL stash.

OpenSea adding Solana NFTs to its collection

Leading tech blogger, Jane Manchun Wong revealed in a series of leaked images that the NFT marketplace OpenSea is planning to add Solana Based NFTs to the platform. This alone is massive for NFT creators on the Solana chain. It is expected that this will be bullish for the altcoin once finalized. Data aggregator CryptoSlam already ranks Solana Based NFTs, among the top five blockchain rankings, a second behind Ethereum.

Solana's partnership with Brave Browser

Brave recently announced they would be using the Solana Chain for De-Fi interactions via its Brave wallet. Brave already boasts of about 42 million active monthly users and 1.3 million creators as revealed through an article on Brave’s Website. This partnership helps Solana take advantage of Brave's existing network effect.

Solana is Reddit's pick for its web3 goals

Reddit has invested in web3 via the Solana chain. Recently, Reddit co-founder, Alexis Alohan revealed that Reddit has already invested $50 million into Solana for its web3 social media project. Solana cofounder, Raj Gokal, also invested a similar amount bringing the total initial funding for web3 on Solana to a cool $100million.

@rajgokal : "I realized $50M is not a lot to do all this... so we made it $100M." @alexisohanian: "That's true."

Crypto Gaming

Solana also presents great promise for on-chain gaming. Unlike other blockchains, Solana has no staggering scaling issues when it comes to a large number of users. Soon, crypto gaming will have to scale on the Solana platform.

These reasons, coupled with a vibrant community that always keeps the Solana Labs in check are some of the reasons why Solana is the crypto to watch this year.

Do you have any other reasons why you are ‘hodling’ your SOL? Talk to us via our social media platforms.