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Solana: As DeFi and NFT Ecosystems Suffer, Can SOL Whales Offer Respite?

2 mins
Updated by Geraint Price
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In Brief

  • Solana presented a persistently negative weighted social sentiment alongside bearish price action.
  • The number of unique addresses that brought more than $100,000 of NFTs on Solana noted a significant drop since Nov. 3.
  • Solana whales increased their holding by 0.88% despite SOL price in tatters.
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For Solana price, it has been a choppy week, month, and year. SOL holders were already making massive losses, but the FTX fallout only deepened the distress. 

A year ago, the Solana ecosystem was budding with developers, new projects, dApps, and well price gains. The many network outages, coupled with the bearish macro market conditions, managed to bring SOL price, down by 95% from its all-time high in Nov. 2021. 

One of the major reasons behind Solana extending its losses was its deep connections with FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried. With the crypto market speculating whether Solana could ever recover from the losses, a look at the Solana ecosystem only worsened investor hopes. 

Solana Price and Sentiment Suffer

Even though the SOL price was already following a major bearish trendline, analysts expected the price to fall further. The recent FTX crash brought SOL prices down to the March 2021 levels. 

Massive sell-offs were the tune of the market, with trade volumes for Solana noting a major spike alongside the falling prices. Following the FTX crash, SOL lost over 63% price in a matter of few days. 

Solana SOL/USDT 1-day | Source: TradingView  FTX
SOL/USDT one-day | Source: TradingView 

Notably, the relative strength index for SOL was still in the oversold zone, showing that sellers dominated the market. 

Solana has often been described as an Ethereum killer, but seemingly SOL had neither the development activity nor the social interest that would let it inch closer to Ethereum. Development activity on Solana had dropped to an all-time low on Nov. 11. 

Solana (SOL) development activity & social sentiment | Source: Santiment
Solana development activity & social sentiment | Source: Santiment 

In addition to that, Solana also showed a persistently negative weighted social sentiment, barring a few days in Nov. With technical indicators and social sentiment pivoting towards bearish, can the NFT and DeFi ecosystem rescue SOL?

DeFi and NFT ecosystem to back SOL?

After the fall of FTX, the Solana DeFi ecosystem took a hit. The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi on Solana dumped by over 96% since its all-time high of $10 billion. Data from DeFiLlama suggested that there was only $318.05 million in collateral in DeFi on Solana.

Solana (SOL) DeFi TVL | Source: DeFiLlama
Solana DeFi TVL | Source: DeFiLlama

The number of unique addresses that brought more than $100,000 of NFTs on Solana noted a significant drop since Nov. 3. The total NFT trades count also presented no major activity in the Solana NFT market. 

Number of unique addresses that brought more than 100k USD of NFTs | Source: Santiment 
Number of unique addresses that brought more than 100k USD of NFTs | Source: Santiment 

While everything else seemed to be in distress, one positive trend for Solana holders was that the percentage of stablecoin total supply held by whales with more than $5 million saw a bump. 

Percentage of stablecoin total supply held by whales with more than $5 million | Source: Santiment 
Percentage of stablecoin total supply held by whales with more than $5 million | Source: Santiment 

Seemingly, whales increased their holding by 0.88%, despite SOL being in tatters. At press time, Solana price traded at $14.19, noting 4.01% weekly gains. Going forward, SOL price could see a slow and long climb upward.

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