SOL Surges Over 130%, Revives Depleting Investors' Interest

Solana (SOL), the native token of the Solana blockchain, has soared to over 133% since the start of the year following a bloody 2022, which saw its value drop to over 80% after its name was dragged with the controversial and now bankrupt crypto derivatives exchange FTX.

SOL saw a massive surge in its price this week since, aside from achieving twice its value, Solana's native token skyrocketed to over 58% at $23.70 over the past seven days.

Once regarded in the industry as the "Ethereum killer," SOL rebounded from its slump and even returned to its spot in the top 10 list of crypto assets by market capitalization, briefly flipping Polygon.

The recent performance of Solana revived investors' interest, which waned last year when the token closed the year trading at 94% less than its previous price, hit a two-year low of $8.17 and fell out of the top 20 list of crypto assets in terms of market capitalization.

SOL saw the largest inflows in two months, according to a recent report from Europe's digital asset investment and trading group CoinShares.

Last week, SOL-linked products received $1.3 million, which is 13 times more than the amount in December 2022, underlining the renewed interest and confidence from investors in the project.

Moreover, the Solana network also experienced a renewal of interest as it saw its daily active users return to levels above 150,000 – a 30% spike over the past months following FTX's spectacular collapse.

Last month, when Solana was trading down 296% at $9.42, Ethereum co-founder and crypto genius Vitalik Buterin said some nice things about the network that helped push its price upward.

"Some smart people tell me there is an earnest smart developer community in Solana, and now that the awful opportunistic money people have been washed out, the chain has a bright future," the crypto genius said in a tweet, adding, "Hard for me to tell from outside, but I hope the community gets its fair chance to thrive."

People like Buterin, who have a wider perspective of the blockchain, web 3 and cryptocurrency, are not easily discouraged by price dumps, especially if they see potential in the product or the network.

In November, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said he would rather concentrate on "the technology and having people build something awesome that's decentralized" instead of the price action of the token and underlined that only a small portion of the projects built on Solana, or around 4%, has exposure to FTX.

"There's definitely more to Solana than FTX," the Solana co-founder remarked.

As of 4:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, SOL was trading up 2.21% at $23.61 with a 24-hour volume of $1,119,618,400, according to the latest data from CoinMarketCap.