Solana was founded in 2017 as a completely open-source public blockchain, designed to provide decentralize finance (DeFi) solutions in a scalable manner.
Solana’s total transactions exceed 15 billion. Solana is capable of more than 1,000 transactions per second (TPS), which is about 60 times the current Ethereum network is capable of processing – about 15 TPS, according to data from Blockchair and Solana Beach.
The average block generation time of Solana is about 751 ms with a lower average transaction fee of $0.000005, which can handle transactions in most current scenarios, especially transactions in the DeFi field. With the rapid outbreak of the DeFi market, Solana, which has faster transaction speed and lower fees, has been favoured by many Defi users and institutional investors.
BKEX Global will list Solana (SOL) and the SOL/USDT aggregate trading pair at 15:00 UTC time, April 21, 2021.
The arrival of institutional investors has also contributed to the soaring price of Solana. Companies including Alameda Research, 3 Commas Capital, Raydium, One Block, and other companies have invested a total of $2 million to build the Step platform, allowing users to visualize, analyze, aggregate, and execute all transactions in Solana contracts.
Step Finance, the Solana ecological dashboard and asset management platform, has previously released an Alpha version. It will launch STEP tokens on the Solana network on April 24, 2021.
Solana (SOL) Price Analysis
Source: SOL/USD Daily via TradingView
Although the entire virtual currency market is in a downturn at the moment, Solana still maintains its own strong upward trend. Today, it broke through the previous high of $36.01 and once again set a new all-time high of $37.10.
So far, SOL’s rate of return is very impressive, rising by more than 230% from $1.52 to $36.34 since the beginning of 2021. At the time of writing, SOL/USD is trading at $36.34.
Although prices fell at the beginning of April, Solana has regained its upward momentum. SOL’s price has been particularly bullish, with the altcoin breaking through the previous consolidation phase.
The transaction price of SOL/USD is much higher than the Exponential Moving Average ribbon. Both the upward sloping moving average and the bullish MACD index indicate that the bulls are currently dominating the market.
The stochastic Relative Strength Index reversed its direction towards the overbought zone, which suggests that SOL may open a faster upward channel. In the case of overall market weakness, Solana’s innovative high is likely to attract a large number of short-term speculators looking to earn a swing income. When Solana hits a new high, this will indicate that the altcoin will not encounter strong selling pressure on its way up.
It is very likely that Solana breaks through $45 in the short term.
Essential Solana platform Step Finance has raised $2 million via Alameda Research, 3Commas Capital, and other investors.
Step Finance acts as “the front page” of Solana, aggregating transactions for all Solana contracts on one interface.
Many major industry players are backing Solana. OKEx and MXC recently announced a $40 million investment to fund the project’s growth and development.
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More funding flowing into the development of the Solana ecosystem. This time, Step Finance has raised $2 million.
Step Finance, Solana’s Dashboard
The platform emerged from a recent Solana hackathon and has been one of the fastest-growing projects in the ecosystem. It’s been described as “the front page” of Solana, allowing users to view transactions across all Solana contracts on one interface.
Alameda Research, which has supported many Solana projects, made an investment in the funding round, alongside 3Commas Capital, Raydium, One Block, Solidity Ventures, and other private investors.
The funds will go towards growing and developing the Step Finance team, including making new hires.
George Harrap, Step Finance co-founder, explained that the platform is useful for helping Solana users view all of the activity attached to their portfolios. He said:
“The biggest problem in the Solana ecosystem is how most projects are siloed from one another. There is no way to know your token and LP balances [or] current position sizes without visiting each website individually and logging in to understand your portfolio—and performance. Step was born out of this necessity and is here to solve that.”
Many other promising Solana projects have appeared in recent months, as the race to capture part of the growing DeFi market intensifies.
Raydium, a decentralized exchange, launched in February and currently contains just under $347 million in total value locked. Tether, DeFi’s most used stablecoin, also launched on Solana in response to the blockchain’s notable growth. The Graph, an Ethereum-native protocol, added support for Solana and other chains earlier this year too. Solana facilitates high-speed, low-cost transactions, something DeFi has needed for some time.
The decentralized finance ecosystem of today largely runs on Ethereum, whose high gas costs have closed off many less wealthy retail participants.
Harrap told Crypto Briefing that Solana is well-positioned to capture some of DeFi’s growth over the coming years. He said:
“Although the majority of DeFi activity is on Ethereum, the growth of crypto isn’t a zero-sum game—the increases in capacity and volume will be felt across multiple chains. 70% ETH, 30% alternative chains.”
He went on to say that Solana is the “hub of DeFi growth.” The blockchain is hoping to leverage its high throughput capabilities to make DeFi more open, and many major industry players appear to believe in its future potential. Alameda Research is led by Sam Bankman-Fried, a billionaire quantitative trader who also advises Serum. Bankman-Fried is one of the crypto space’s best-known figures these days, and he’s become known for showing support for Solana.
Prior to Step’s funding round, the Asian exchanges OKEx and MXC partnered with the Solana Foundation to launch two investment funds. Aimed at advancing Solana growth and development, the funds will bring $40 million into the ecosystem.
Step Finance will soon launch its native token, STEP, on Solana Mainnet. Meanwhile, Solana’s token, SOL, has soared recently: it’s up 40% in the last two weeks, now in the top 20 of all cryptocurrencies by market cap.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.
This news was brought to you by ANKR, our preferred DeFi Partner.
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Step Finance, a Solana-native DeFi protocol, announced the completion of a private token sale for $2 million, which will help build and develop its platform.
The round, disclosed on Tuesday, saw participation from notable Solana backers including Alameda Research, the hedge fund known for launching and backing FTX and Serum. Other investors include Raydium, One Block, 3 Commas Capital, Solidity Ventures, and some undisclosed individual investors within the Solana ecosystem.
Step Finance is a DeFi position manager and aggregator, offering similar functionality to Ethereum’s Zapper. George Harrap, co-founder of Step, explained the current issues that the project is trying to solve:
“The biggest problem in the Solana ecosystem is how most projects are siloed from one another. There is no way to know your token and LP balances, current position sizes, etc., without actually visiting each website individually and logging in to understand your portfolio — and performance.”
The Step Finance project emerged from the Solana hackathon held in March in collaboration with Serum. Though the project did not win any prize during the event, it appears to have provided the team with the necessary experience to pursue further funding. Harrap added:
“It’s hard to track anything on Solana because what Step is doing doesn’t exist yet, so there is a clear market fit that investors saw. Our team is made up of known people in the crypto industry who have raised money, built projects, companies, and start-ups, and the investors knew that their money was in safe hands.”
Beyond the position and yield aggregation, the platform also seeks to provide insight into the user’s portfolio risk through parameters like the Sortino score. The platform is primarily meant for power users in Solana DeFi, where projects generally focus on more traditional trading platforms.
Solana is making a powerful push toward onboarding the “accessory” projects that simplify usage of other DeFi protocols. In the latest Hackathon, winners also included projects that emulate the functionality of platforms like Synthetix or Yearn.Finance, in addition to unique additions such as tax reporting management.
