Solana Soars Double-Digits as Helium Network Announces Merge Date

Solana bulls are back in action.

SOL, the native token powering the layer-1 blockchain Solana, has gained over 11% overnight and is the largest gainer among the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, according to data from Coingecko.

At press time, SOL trades at around $26.09, retreating from its new 90-day high of $26.96 earlier today.

On a weekly note, the so-called Ethereum killer has gained a whopping 21% and is now the 12th-largest cryptocurrency in market capitalization.

Last week’s price action vaulted Solana’s market capitalization across the $10 billion mark for the first time since its crash amid the FTX collapse in November 2022.

Over the past 24 hours, nearly $5.86 million worth of Solana futures positions were liquidated, per data from Coinglass.

Of the total liquidations, 70.26% of the positions totaling $4.12 million were blown-out short trades.

Red bars show blown-out short trades. Source: Coinglass.

Despite Solana's heroics this past week, SOL is still down 89.81% from its historical all-time high of $259.96 in November 2021.

Solana bulls on the rise

The primary catalysts behind SOL’s rise are the upcoming migration of the Helium network to Solana and a sharp increase in the Solana-based NFT trading volumes.

Established in 2019, Helium is a decentralized network of devices called “hotspots” that provides long-range connectivity for the internet of things (IoT) devices. The network runs on the eponymously-named blockchain.

By merging with Solana, Helium developers can focus on adding more hotspots rather than maintaining the blockchain.

“With the ability to power thousands of transactions per second, combined with its massive ecosystem of developers, applications, and integrations, Solana has the speed and scale necessary to take on the blockchain responsibility,” read a recent blog post on the merge event.

The migration is expected to happen next month on March 27. As for HNT, Helium's native token, it's risen roughly 6% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.

NFT trading activity is also increasing on Solana. Solana-based NFT sales grew 12.68% in the last 24 hours to $2.63 million per data from Cryptoslam.

During the same period, Ethereum-based NFT sales plummeted by 10.57%.