While all eyes are on Bitcoin’s creep toward $30,000 and Ether’s double-digit year-to-date jump, another cryptocurrency has quietly surpassed the gains of both since the start of the year.
Solana, or SOL, the native token of the Solana blockchain, has shot up 133% since trading at just $10 on Jan. 1, continuing to shrug off any reputational hit from being associated with Sam Bankman-Fried. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is up 78% and Ether is up just over 50% over the same period.
While Solana’s market capitalization sank to $5.3 billion the day after FTX declared bankruptcy, it has since recovered 72% to $9.1 billion. It was up 3% over 24 hours on Friday afternoon, trading at $22.86. Bitcoin and Ether were both down about 1%, at $29,300 and $1,800, respectively, according to CoinMarketCap.
The number of successful transactions on the Solana blockchain rose to 713 million in March—the most since October—according to data tracker FlipSide. The total number of transactions is still down year over year largely due to a lagging bear market.
The Solana blockchain, which…