Solana Price Falls Amid Network Congestion as Wormhole Plunges After Airdrop

Solana (SOL) has seen the biggest losses in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap today, down about 7% in the past 24 hours according to data CoinGecko, as congestion issues plague the network.

The coin is down about 6% over the past week and is now priced at $175. But the fifth-biggest digital asset by market cap isn't the only one suffering: some of the prominent tokens that run on its network have been hit even harder.

Wormhole (W), which held its airdrop earlier this week, has been rocked the hardest and is down by 17% in the past day. More than 400,000 unique wallets were eligible for the drop, but the token has already shed 41% of its value since Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the JUP token of decentralized exchange aggregator Jupiter has shed nearly 14% of its value over the past day. Its price is now coming in at $1.37. Even so, the price is still up 140% over the last month thanks to a previous spike.

And popular meme token Dogwifhat (WIF) has plunged by close to 12% to a current price of $3.37. It's still up big on the month, climbing 64% over the past 30 days, but has plunged 31% since hitting an all-time high price earlier this week.

All three are major tokens running on the Solana blockchain. They're also among the biggest losers today.

Solana is a popular network that allows developers to build on its blockchain. It outperforms Ethereum's own mainnet by being faster and cheaper, but recent congestion issues are diminishing that advantage.

Recently, the Solana network has come under strain as more projects and users flock to use its ecosystem. As a result, those heavily involved in Solana are hoping to make changes to its network.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko vented on Twitter late Thursday about the struggles of patching congestion-related bugs only to have more appear. Meanwhile, Helius Labs co-founder and CEO Mert Mumtaz—a prominent Solana builder and personality—accused an unspecified infrastructure provider of exploiting a Solana bug to make extra profit.

But congestion on Solana's network isn't the only issue impacting the market today: Bitcoin is down over the past week and is now trading around $68,000, below its old November 2021 all-time high of $69,044. It touched a new all-time high last month of close to $74,000, but has since struggled to hold ground.

As a result, most of the market is down with it, and new tokens—like the ones running on Solana—are likely to be the most volatile.

Edited by Andrew Hayward