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As the cryptocurrency market anticipates a potential bull market, investors may consider accumulating altcoins in preparation for it.
A notable trend has emerged where altcoins are gaining significant strength, as evidenced by their recent breach of the 50-week simple moving average (SMA) barrier, signaling a more positive investor sentiment toward them.
In the next phase of the market expansion, Solana (SOL) is expected to reach 10% of Ethereum (ETH), according toInvestAnswers, a prominent crypto analyst.
Assuming Ethereum tops $8,000 in the next bull market, the analyst speculates that if Solana reaches 10% of ETH’s market cap, a threshold it has already reached in the past, that would mean a $231 price target for SOL, resulting in a return on investment (ROI) of approximately 278% from the current price of $61.02.
A few days ago, Solana’s DeFi ecosystem reached a significant milestone, with its Total Value Locked (TVL) hitting a new yearly peak of over $655 million. This marks a substantial increase of 211% since the $210.47 million TVL recorded on January 1.
Furthermore, Solana boasts a remarkable transaction speed of tens of thousands of transactions per second (TPS), far surpassing Ethereum’s 15 TPS. This makes Solana a favorable choice for applications demanding high throughput, such as decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces.
SOL reaching a new market cap
In a more optimistic scenario, InvestAnswers suggests that Solana reaching 20% of Ethereum’s market capitalization is not entirely implausible.
If Solana were to achieve this milestone, it would translate to a market capitalization of around $192 billion, according to the expert.
Considering the potential market cap of $192 billion and token quantities, this would translate into a price of $453 for 1 SOL, resulting in a ROI of around 2,038% from the current price of $61.02.
InvestAnswers highlights that Solana has already exceeded the 10% threshold in the past.
The analyst presented a chart depicting SOL’s upside potential, where the yellow line represents 10% of ETH’s market cap, and the blue line represents Solana’s price crossing this threshold in October 2021.
Cathie Wood praises Solana’s speed and efficiency
Solana reached a new year-to-day (YTD) high a day after ARK Invest (NYSEARCA: ARKK) CEO Cathie Wood extolled the network for its efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
During a CNBC interview on November 15, Wood characterized the Solana network as a significant infrastructure player within the broader blockchain ecosystem.
She expressed satisfaction with its performance in recent market conditions, stating that Solana has been doing a “really good job.” Drawing a parallel to the historical comparison between Bitcoin and Ethereum, she said:
“Ether was faster and cheaper than Bitcoin in the day — that’s how we got Ether. Solana is even faster and cost-effective than Ether,”
Wood said
Wood praised Solana for its speed and efficiency compared to the Ethereum network, but predicting the project’s potential remains challenging. Solana is a nascent project, and various factors come into play when determining its future price.
Fundamentals: SOL vs ETH
Solana’s innovative proof of history (PoH) consensus mechanism utilizes a verifiable record of past events to achieve network-wide consensus. This approach enables it to complete tens of thousands of transactions per second at a remarkably low fee, making the ecosystem ideal for applications demanding high throughput.
On the other hand, Ethereum’s transition from proof of work (PoW) to proof of stake (PoS), known as ‘The Ethereum Merge,’ marked a significant step in the Ethereum roadmap.
The Merge has brought down Ethereum’s energy consumption by 99.95%, addressing one of the longest-standing issues with PoW-based blockchain systems, but it didn’t address the issues of only 15 TPS and high costs on the network.
Solana Labs Co-Founder Anatoly Yakovenko believes the Merge has minimal impact on improving Ethereum’s scalability based on the number of transactions and users, he said during an interview with Bloomberg Technology on September 21.
“The Ethereum Merge doesn’t really improve the scalability of the network. When you look at the number of transactions that Solana (SOL) handles from applications and from users on a daily basis, that’s more than not just Ethereum but all Ethereum-based blockchains combined. So I think Ethereum has a long way to go on scalability,”
Yakovenko said
To address the issues of scalability, Ethereum is going to implement sharding and zk rollups. This approach will significantly reduce the load on the main chain, enabling faster transaction processing and lower fees, but it’s years away, according to the Ethereum Foundation.
Some are concert about the Solana ecosystem and question its long-term sustainability and resilience, and while the developer community is growing, it is still far behind Ethereum’s well-established ecosystem of developers and projects.
Solana holds an advantage over Ethereum in terms of transaction speed and scalability, making it an attractive choice for projects with high throughput demands. While Ethereum is working on addressing these limitations, it may take several years to achieve the same level of performance as Solana. This paraphrase might be the main reason SOL will outperform ETH in the next bull market, but the project’s long-term success hinges on its ability to grow and address network stability issues.
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