Solana Showcases Over 1,000% YTD Increase Amid Price Dive

Solana saw a more than 1,000% year-to-date gain despite a dip in its value on Thursday, which erased the gains it accumulated on Christmas Day.

Solana, the native cryptocurrency of the Solana network, retraced its price Thursday and plummeted below the $100 threshold before slowly climbing back to regain its losses above $105. Despite its current uptrend, the crypto asset is still down by 14% from its yearly high of $123 recorded Tuesday.

Solana now ranks fifth in the list of the world's largest crypto assets by market capitalization, which is led by Bitcoin, the world's oldest asset.

It was in the fourth spot after flipping Binance Coin (BNB) and Ripple's XRP a few days ago. But its spot is now occupied by BNB, with XRP still trailing behind SOL, data from CoinMarketCap showed.

SOL's rally saw some Solana-based meme coins reap massive gains between Nov. 22 and Dec. 22, which include a 650% price spike of BONK and a 123,000% increase in the price of Dogwifhat (WIF).

Both meme coins have now retraced over 50% from their respective all-time high prices.

Solana's massive price gain was also propelled by its impressive performance during the weekend, particularly when it flipped two of the world's largest crypto assets by market capitalization – BTC and Ether (ETH) – in terms of trading volume on major centralized crypto exchanges.

The Solana network also saw a surge in activities, recording 15.6 million this month, highlighting a 50% increase and surpassing the 15.2 million activities it listed in January.

Moreover, the network hit a record-high number of 6.8 million addresses this month, which surpassed the 6.6 million addresses it saw in May.

Data from market data provider Kaiko revealed that Solana bounced back and thrived, noting that it "significantly outperformed" Ethereum, as it moved from "a 0.01 price ratio to a 0.03 ratio," attributing these impressive gains in the last couple of months to the success of the two airdrops by PYTH and JTO.

Solana was trading in the green zone at $109.04 with a 24-hour trading volume up by 10.50% at $4,900,443,175 as of 5:15 a.m. ET on Friday. The latest price action represents a 5.11% in the past 24 hours, a 19.54% gain over the last seven days and a 1,055.42% YTD price increase.

Data from CoinMarketCap shows that Solana's current circulating supply stands at 429,179,757 SOL, with its market cap at $46,851,805,813.