- Solana’s developers try to uplift the community’s morale after a harrowing drop in SOL prices.
- SOL dropped over 60 percent in the past week courtesy of the cryptocurrency’s connections to FTX’s CEO
Despite plunging amid the FTX liquidity crisis, Solana founders have been encouraging the network’s supporters to hold steady and focus on Solana’s long-term vision.
In the wake of this week’s kerfuffle in crypto markets, Solana has been one of the largest losers, shedding just over 51 percent in the past week and 94.19 percent from its all-time high. In the past 24 hours, the top cryptocurrency has dropped by about 23.61 percent to trade at $15.19 at press time according to our data.
Solana’s plunge has been attributed to its close ties to Sam Bankman Fried, CEO of FTX and the founder of Alameda Research. Since Saturday, the crypto community has been speculating that Alameda might try to dump its SOL token to raise fresh liquidity given that SOL is Alameda’s second-largest holding after the FTT token. A recent report revealed that Alameda holds $292 million of “unlocked SOL,” $863 million of “locked SOL” and $41 million of “SOL collateral.”
The entity is also believed to hold a significant number of SOL-related tokens such as MAPS and OXY. Sam Bankman’s prior support for Solana has also played a huge role in the cryptocurrency’s drop given that nobody wants to touch anything associated with the young CEO.
Solana founder: We’ll get through together
Nevertheless, despite SOL’s woes, founders and developers have been trying to motivate users in a bid to salvage Solana’s fading enthusiasm. “We launched in 2020 after markets crashed and the world went into lockdown – chewing glass is in our DNA, and we’ll get through together,” Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko wrote on Wednesday highlighting the developments that were going into the layer 1 network.
“I’m here building Solana because I get to work on some of the toughest problems in computer science, and because of the community building on the network,” He added.
Just last week, Solana made a series of announcements during this year’s Breakpoint conference including the launch of Solana validators on Google cloud. The announcements sent SOL prices up over 20% before recoiling on the back of the FTX fallout.
Earlier today, Chris Burniske, a former lead for Ark Invest’s crypto division noted that “there’s a strong solidarity emerging” among Solana builders.
“If you get to know engineers & builders sticking around Solana, you’ll come to see they aren’t soul-sucking demons: these are clear-eyed adults building an admirable system at a breakneck pace” Burniske tweeted predicting that the Solana ecosystem would emerge “just as Ethereum emerged from 2018-19.”
Meanwhile, the Solana team revealed its latest achievements today demonstrating that the energy, commitment, and range of projects on the network are stronger than ever. According to the report, active users on Solana as well as developers remain strong. One of the biggest successes of 2022 has been in the Solana NFT community with over $3.6b in primary and secondary sales being made this year alone.