Solana (SOL) is retreating by nearly 4% in the past 24 hours, as yesterday’s cooler-than-expected inflation print in the United States has been unable to mitigate the latest selling pressure.
The crypto market is currently taking a breather from last month’s rally and seems to be trying to find liquidity from late buyers to kickstart its next leg up.
Trading volumes for SOL remain high at $3.7 billion — a figure that accounts for 5.6% of the asset’s circulating market cap.
However, the token just hit a sell wall at $120, which was our previous bullish target for SOL. This justifies a temporary setback, but it is not an indication that the rally is over.
Alpenglow Upgrade Delivers Satisfying Results on the Solana Testnet
One of the things that got the Solana community excited recently was the launch of the upcoming Alpenglow upgrade on the blockchain’s testnet and devnet.
Alpenglow is touted as the most important technical overhaul for the Solana blockchain in its history. Its intended goal is to expedite transaction settlement speeds from around 12 seconds to less than 100ms.
This would make Solana nearly as fast as the internet — a major milestone that could expand the network’s real-world use cases dramatically.
The launch of the testnet and devnet has allowed the community to give the new version of the blockchain a test drive. Early results indicate that settlement speeds could even exceed these initial goals.
Hence, the final implementation of Alpenglow on the Solana mainnet could drive significant interest toward its blockchain and give its DeFi ecosystem a boost.
If Alpenglow delivers its expected outcome, this would give Solana two edges over its toughest competitors, which are currently Ethereum and BNB. First, it will be cheaper to use than the Ethereum Virtual Machine, while settlement speeds will be much faster.
Meanwhile, when it comes to BNB, Solana will be more decentralized, as the number of validators is much higher compared to the latter.
Solana Price Forecast
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See all Solana forecastsSOL Could Drop to $110 Before a Strong Rally to $150 Begins
Upgrade aside, we are also seeing a positive spike in on-chain metrics that indicates increased network usage at a point when a bull market for crypto appears to be starting.
App fees have been steadily rising for three months in a row now, moving from $186 million to $382 million during this period for an impressive 105% jump. This strengthens SOL’s fundamentals.
Meanwhile, heading to the daily chart, we can see that the price action has retreated, as expected, upon hitting the $120 threshold. We expect a drop to the $110 – $112 range in the next few days and believe that this will be the hottest buy zone to capitalize on the token’s next leg up.
Once the recovery begins, the next target for SOL, following a confirmed breakout of $120, would be the $150 area. We see the successful implementation of Alpenglow as the catalyst that could push Solana to that target.
