Solana is on a tear. It's currently priced at $43.95, the seventh largest digital asset by market cap, and up more than 20% in the past day, according to CoinGecko. That means it's shot up nearly 33% in the past week.

The Ethereum competitor is by far the best-performing asset right now—but not long ago it was getting hit by negative news. 

Since the beginning of October, interest in the open-source blockchain project has soared: SOL is up 88% in the past 30 days. Not many other coins or digital tokens have been on such a roll.

SOL is the asset used to make transactions on Solana, a blockchain used by developers to build decentralized applications such as DeFi lending protocols or games.

The blockchain launched to take on Ethereum, which many consider to be slow and expensive to run many transactions.

Interest in it has grown recently and last week asset management company VanEck predicted a potential eye-popping 10,600% price increase for it in the coming years.

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Other major digital assets are currently up, but with more moderate gains: Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency, has done well the past month—gaining 30% in 30 days—but today is only up less than 1%.

Solana. Image: Grant Kempster/Decrypt

What Is Solana? A Scalable, Decentralized Network for Dapps

Decentralized applications, or dapps, are widely regarded as one of the key use cases for blockchain technology. In the last few years, dapps have come on in leaps and bounds, with dapp developers launching everything from games to decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms on blockchain—and a concomitant explosion in user interest. But there's a problem. The vast majority of these dapps run on Ethereum, which has struggled to keep up with rampant demand—leading to congestion on the network and soar...

While Ethereum is up 1.5%, trading for $1,836.

And XRP, which is up significantly compared to other coins and tokens the past week, is still making gains—albeit small ones: it is up less than 2% in the past day, coming in at a price of $0.60.

The entire cryptocurrency market cap today stands at $1.33 trillion, up 1.2% in 24 hours.

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