"I will buy all your SOL at the current market price of $3 each, you can sell them, and then get lost." This was the reply by FTX founder SBF on Twitter on January 10, 2021 to a trader who was bearish on Solana, "SOL is about to see massive buy-side because every billionaire in the world is calling me and SBF (to consult on Solana)." This was a tweet by Multicoin Capital managing partner Kyle Saman on December 1 of the same year. At that time, the SOL price had already exceeded $230, with an annual increase of over 150 times, becoming the star of the entire crypto industry.

"Here are the reasons why the Solana chain will disappear and the SOL token will go to zero." This was a tweet by ETH maximalist James Spediaccid in December 2022, a year later, predicting that SOL will be wiped out of the crypto market. At that time, SOL was affected by the Crypto Winter and the FTX bankruptcy announcement, dropping to as low as $8, a decline of over 96% in just over a year, almost reaching zero.

"Only Possible On Solana", as the community collectively chanted this slogan, on November 22, 2024, the SOL price reached $260, breaking the previous all-time high. From the low point to the high point, it has increased by more than 30 times, completing its phoenix rebirth.

The First Half of Solana's Life

The Story of Solana's Birth

A starting capital of hundreds of billions of dollars is not that uncommon. Anatoly Yakovenko, a former Qualcomm engineer of Ukrainian descent, wanted to create his own on-chain order book trading platform. He then very quickly realized that Ethereum was actually unable to handle such high throughput on-chain transactions. One night, Anatoly drank 3 cups of coffee, tossed and turned without being able to sleep, and got up to write the initial Solana code.

According to the description of STEPN's Chief Revenue Officer and former Multicoin Capital partner Mable in her podcast, Solana's fundraising stage was not smooth. In 2018, the Solana team went to Asia to raise funds, coinciding with the crypto market being in a bear market, and the market had already been hurt many times by the rhetoric of high-performance public chains, so Solana's fundraising in China, South Korea and Japan was met with resistance everywhere.

In 2019, Anatoly, who attended the Blockchain Week in Shanghai, had already gained some fame. At that time, new chains like Solana and Near were constantly appearing at various peripheral activities. Anatoly explained to others over and over again what Solana was, but most people were not really paying attention. Just like Vitalik a few years ago in China.

Finally, after several rounds of fundraising, the Solana team eventually raised $25.53 million, far less than the hundreds of millions of dollars that star public chains now routinely raise, and also less than the Near and Avalanche public chains that were launched around the same time.

The Rise of Solana - SBF's Choice

In fact, even after the mainnet launch, Solana didn't really attract much attention, like the network stopping block production due to some issues, and the community didn't even notice. It wasn't until the second half of 2020 that Solana officially entered the public eye. The reason is simple - FTX founder SBF came. Solana's true rise is absolutely inseparable from SBF's support. According to Mable's account, SBF and Solana's encounter was not just a coincidence, but more like a mutual choice.

At that time, FTX had just been founded for a year and had quickly occupied its own territory in the trading track. Coming from Wall Street, SBF really showed the crypto industry something different, not only in the trading tools where he provided a different experience from other competitors, but SBF himself was also deeply involved in the industry, participating in all the hot spots without missing a single one.

In the early days of DeFi Summer, SBF wanted to put as much trading as possible on-chain. So SBF's team proactively contacted star public chains like Polygon, Avalanche and Near, and the market rumor at the time was that FTX was most interested in Near, but their mainnet launch still needed some time, and SBF couldn't wait. After Kyle of Multicoin learned about this, he found a way to introduce Anatoly to SBF.

One early morning in July 2020, Kyle had a 3-hour communication with SBF, and SBF became interested. The next day, the Solana chain suddenly suffered a dust attack, with countless small transactions occurring simultaneously and for a long time on Solana, yes, it was SBF who did it, he wanted to personally test the actual performance of the Solana chain, and Solana ultimately withstood the massive junk transactions from SBF's team. It was on the same day that SBF decided to invest in Solana. A few days later, the design of Serum, the decentralized order book matching engine incubated by FTX itself, was born.

Subsequently, Solana's ecosystem experienced explosive growth.

The Rise of the Solana Ecosystem

First, Serum had a circulating market cap of over $1 billion at its peak, and projects such as Raydium, Oxygen and Star Atlas in the Solana ecosystem were launched on FTX.

Furthermore, FTX's support meant that other centralized exchanges had to start integrating and supporting this new Layer1 network, which greatly increased the priority of Solana-related matters on the roadmaps of major centralized exchanges. SBF also personally pulled a group for Anatoly and Circle CEO Jeremy to support the integration of USDC on the Solana chain.

In addition to SBF's support, the Solana team itself has also been actively hosting hackathons to attract developers from around the world. It can be said that the Solana hackathon has now become an important source of vitality for the Solana ecosystem. Relying on its performance advantages and SBF's unprecedented absolute pumping ability, the Solana token SOL has risen from less than $1 to a peak of $248 in 2021, creating a legend.

At that time, Solana was ranked behind the top Ethereum and BSC, not the absolute king of the public chain ecosystem, but compared to Avalanche and Near of the same period, Solana has been completely transformed under the support of FTX, but who would have thought that SBF would get into trouble.

The Finale

The Crypto Winter arrived in 2022, and with the consecutive implosions of the Terra (Luna) ecosystem and Three Arrow Capital (3AC), the market panic continued to spread. Ultimately, under the combined forces of internal and external factors, Solana's biggest supporter, who was also the most powerful supporter in the industry at the time, also collapsed - FTX announced bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy of FTX and Alameda severely impacted the entire Solana ecosystem. Not only did it cause the Solana Foundation to suffer over $180 million in crypto asset losses, it also directly destroyed the important underlying protocol Serum in the Solana DeFi ecosystem. Because the critical permissions were on the FTX side, this foundational protocol quickly became inoperative.

Affected by this series of "catastrophic" events, Solana's TVL (Total Value Locked) also plummeted from the bull market high of $10 billion to around $200 million, and a series of star projects chose to leave the Solana ecosystem and migrate to EVM chains.

Worse still, Solana's technology has also frequently encountered problems. In the middle of 2022, the network was interrupted multiple times due to surging transaction volume. All of this has led to doubts about the reliability of its technology in the outside world. Downtime seems to have become a proprietary term for Solana.

The community is in mourning, the SOL token is plummeting, and it seems that Solana has "no way to turn the tide".

Solana's Rebirth

Five days after the SOL token fell to $8, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin posted a tweet.

"Some smart people have told me that Solana has a genuine smart developer community, and now the terrible opportunistic capital has been washed out, this chain has a bright future.

I'm hard-pressed to judge from the outside, but I hope the community gets a fair chance to develop."

Vitalik's words seemed to serve as a soothing balm, and the SOL token immediately rebounded. The panic in the Solana community was relieved in the subsequent consecutive rises.

In the days that followed, in addition to Multicoin's continued unwavering support for Solana, Chris from Placeholder has been publicly advocating for Solana since December 2022. Another partner, Joel Monegro, who previously wrote about the fat protocol at USV, also wrote an article in October 2023 comparing Ethereum and Solana, stating that Ethereum is like Android, while Solana is more like iOS.

As for the events of 2024, everyone knows that the dust attack tested by SBF in the early morning became a reality, and when hundreds of new assets were issued per minute and tens of thousands of transactions were processed simultaneously, only Solana was able to perfectly support this grand transaction feast. Accompanied by the birth of multi-billion dollar market cap meme coins, SOL also reached a new historical high, with a market cap of over a trillion dollars.

Why did Solana reach a new high?

Precise timing control by the team and foundation

In the darkest moment after the FTX collapse, Solana's fate seemed to have been determined. FTX was not only an investor in Solana, but also one of its most important ecosystem drivers. However, the collapse of FTX not only deprived Solana of its strongest ally, but also pushed it to the edge of market trust.

Faced with this crisis, the Solana Foundation chose a pragmatic path to revival. They quickly disclosed all assets related to Alameda, demonstrating financial transparency, while significantly optimizing the network infrastructure, effectively reducing downtime incidents through improvements to the verification mechanism and transaction flow control. This unwavering stance in the face of external pressure has regained some of the community's trust in Solana.

However, what really made the market take notice of Solana again was not only its technical improvements, but the value it created for developers and users through concrete actions.

Hackathons: The engine of the Solana ecosystem

Since the end of 2022, the Solana Foundation has increased the intensity of hosting hackathons, attracting the attention of global developers. These events not only enhanced community vitality, but also incubated a batch of projects with great potential.

According to incomplete statistics, in the past three years of hackathons, 60,000+ developers have participated in Solana-hosted hackathons, 4,000+ projects have been launched, and over $600 million in cumulative funding has been raised, giving birth to star projects such as Jito, Tensor, io.net, Marinade, and Solend.

Hackathons are not only a platform for developer exchanges, but also an important source of innovation in the Solana ecosystem. Many projects quickly landed after the hackathons, injecting strong momentum into the prosperity of the ecosystem.

The victory of pragmatism

Mable, who witnessed the rise of Solana, mentioned in summarizing the reasons for Solana's success, "The Solana founders have a small ego, and the entire team is very pragmatic. They don't have too many obsessions, and they don't feel they have to have a set of things that are considered sacred. They just try whatever can help the project gain more attention and recognition. They are not afraid of embarrassment or failure, and they will try again if they fail."

Solana did not shout slogans of "disruption" or "changing the world", but instead focused on improving efficiency and reducing costs. With the ability to process over 65,000 transactions per second and a transaction cost as low as $0.00025, Solana has become the preferred network for MEME transactions. This focus on practical application has also made Solana's ecosystem diverse, covering payment tools, Web3 social, and consumer devices, covering all aspects of user life.

This pragmatic technical style is not only popular in the crypto world, but has also won the recognition of traditional financial institutions. Financial giants like Visa have already piloted cross-border payments on the Solana chain, validating the potential of Solana technology. These collaborations not only expand Solana's application scenarios, but also open the door for it to penetrate the mainstream financial world.

Summary

Solana's performance in 2024 can be described as eye-catching, demonstrating strong on-chain economic vitality, and even approaching or even surpassing Ethereum in multiple key indicators. Relying on its ultra-high transaction throughput and extremely low transaction costs, Solana has become an excellent choice for high-frequency on-chain transactions. The number of active user addresses and on-chain transaction volume have continued to rise, especially driven by the MEME coin craze, with pumpfun attracting a large number of new users, making Solana the center of secondary market trading.

From hitting the bottom to regaining the peak, Solana's story may not just be the victory of a project, but also a symbol of the resilience of the crypto industry. In terms of price performance, Solana's market cap has reached 33% of Ethereum, soaring more than 18 times from the bear market low. This growth not only reflects the market's recognition of Solana's technical advantages, but also demonstrates its strong ecosystem recovery capability and market appeal. Whether it's the payment, DeFi, or MEME coin trading frenzy, Solana is using real data to prove that "from zero to the peak, Only Possible On Solana".

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