US asset management giant Franklin Templeton pointed out today that Solana’s growth expectations will continue, solidifying its position as the third largest cryptocurrency asset after BTC and ETH. It believes that Solana has strong technical capabilities and is expected to lead adoption in areas such as DePIN, payments, and CLOB.
Solana’s network has benefited from the impressive performance of its native token SOL, as well as continuous meme trends and incentives such as airdrops and Ore mining, making it one of the most notable public chains, currently ranking as the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Franklin Templeton expects Solana’s growth to continue. Today, it tweeted that Solana has demonstrated its resilience and dominance in the crypto space from last year until now, positioning it as the network that will lead the next wave of crypto adoption. Therefore, its growth is likely to continue, solidifying its position as the third largest cryptocurrency asset after BTC and ETH.
Looking back at its performance, the report pointed out that cryptocurrency activities on Solana accelerated since the fourth quarter of 2023, especially due to significant airdrops happening in the Solana ecosystem, such as Jito and Pyth, creating a wealth effect of over $1 billion and driving the rise of SOL and other Solana ecosystem tokens, especially meme coins.
Meme coins have gained widespread attention, with a significant portion of their issuance and trading happening on Solana, with some reaching market capitalizations of billions of dollars, such as Bonk (BONK) and Dogwifhat (WIF). This has driven a significant increase in total fees and DEX trading volume on the Solana network.
Solana is most likely to bring the next wave of adoption. Franklin Templeton anticipates that the next major event in the cryptocurrency space will likely happen on Solana. The institution pointed out that Solana has strong technical capabilities and is particularly suitable for the areas that they believe have the most potential to lead the next wave of adoption. These areas include DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure network), payments, compressed NFT/xNFT (executable NFT), and CLOB (centralized limit order book)/order flow payments.
Furthermore, Franklin Templeton remains optimistic about the prospects of meme and airdrop-induced wealth effect in the Solana ecosystem. One of the main drivers to address the congestion issues on the Solana network due to high demand is Firedancer, which will be launched later this year. Firedancer is a Solana verification node client developed by Jump Crypto, aiming to optimize various aspects of the network. Once implemented, Solana’s technical capabilities are expected to significantly improve. On May 1st, Firedancer engineer cantelopepeel.eth tweeted that the final integration of the Firedancer client is progressing smoothly, with a comprehensive testing coming soon.
In conclusion, Franklin Templeton believes that with continuous adoption, future catalysts, and exciting new areas, Solana has the potential to become the third largest cryptocurrency asset after Bitcoin and Ethereum, and become the network that leads the next wave of cryptocurrency adoption.