Key Points A lot more users and developers are using Solana than before. It's continuing to increase its links with traditional financial system payment rails. Applications hosted on the chain are generating real revenue, and more than before.
10 stocks we like better than Solana › History books are full of boomtowns that thrived because someone built roads before the crowd arrived. Crypto is no different. Blockchains with smooth, cheap on-ramps attract new capital and more developer talent than those without.
In that vein, Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) has infrastructure that's smoother and faster than almost any other chains, and the early traffic numbers are eyebrow-raising. So here are the top three reasons Solana deserves a spot on your watch list or even a purchase today. 1.
Developer and user momentum are surging again Cheap, rapid throughput is Solana's calling card and it's an asset that offers a perpetual yield. Users love to use systems that "just work," and app developers prefer to work with responsive platforms that don't cost much of anything to test or deploy software to. The chain regularly clears more than 2,000 transactions per second (TPS) in production tests, which is orders of magnitude above rivals such as Ethereum.
At the same time, the chain's average transaction fees hover near a quarter of a cent. The benefits of this speed and affordability are evident in current on-chain metrics. The crypto research company Nansen recently counted a total of nearly 35 million active wallet addresses on Solana.
Image source: Getty Images. Developers are following the users. In 2024, Solana saw its active developer count jump 83% year over year, even as industrywide numbers dipped due to general disinterest in the altcoin ecosystem.
That influx of builders typically precedes the creation and launch of new apps, greater liquidity, and, perhaps in time, higher token demand for the chain's native token as well as its ecosystem projects. In other words, rising developer engagement is a leading indicator of long-term value creation, and right now that indicator is flashing green. The same can't be said of this chain's competitors.
2. Payments partnerships move SOL into real wallets High throughput means nothing if nobody uses Solana for daily transactions. But there are plenty of reasons to believe that the coin is actually in use, and more are on the way.
In September 2023, Visa expanded its USDC stablecoin settlement pilot to include Solana, citing the chain's speed and low cost when settling card flows for acquirers Worldpay and Nuvei. A month earlier, Shopify enabled merchants to accept USDC through Solana Pay, letting millions of storefronts settle in seconds instead of waiting days for ACH debits.
