Solana’s Firedancer Testnet Fuels 81% Gains in 30 Days

Solana has posted 30-day gains of nearly 81% and weekly gains of over 30% since the launch of the blockchain’s long-awaited scalability solution, Firedancer’s testnet.

On November 2, SOL surpassed $41, reaching highs not seen since August. Long promoted as an “Ethereum killer,” SOL has significantly outperformed Ether, which posted gains of less than 11% over the past month.

According to CoinShares, SOL-related investment products have seen inflows of millions of dollars over the past few weeks. SOL is, however, still down around 84% from its Nov. 6, 2021, all-time high of almost $260.

At Solana’s Breakpoint conference on October 31, Solana Foundation executive director Dan Albert announced the testnet launch of Firedancer, which Web3 development firm Jump Crypto has been working on since August.

Anatoly Yakovenko, founder and CEO of Solana Labs, has stated that Firedancer is a novel validator client for the network that aims to increase speed, reliability, and validator diversity.

Its mainnet launch is scheduled for the first half of 2024. Firedancer has been deemed the permanent solution to Solana’s previous network outage issues, which Yakovenko referred to as a “curse.”

Solana suffered 14 partial or significant outages in 2022, but its uptime improved in 2023, with only one major outage reported in February.

Concerns exist, however, that selling pressure could impact SOL as $56 million worth of the cryptocurrency associated with FTX was unstaked and sent to an unknown wallet.

An additional $32 million worth of SOL associated with FTX and Alameda Research was transferred to a wallet believed to belong to Galaxy Digital, the firm’s designated liquidator.

Other altcoins also experienced significant price increases during the month, as the crypto market sentiment turned positive.

On November 2, the Crypto Fear and Greed Index rose six points from the previous day to 72 out of 100, indicating “greed.” Chainlink saw an over 54% gain in the last 30 days.

In the meantime, Bitcoin, Avalanche, and Near Protocol posted respective 30-day gains of 30%, 32%, and 37.5%.