Solana (SOL), the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has set a fresh record price against rival layer-1 network Ethereum, thanks to a renewed boom in Solana’s network activity.
Solana zealots have long been predicting that SOL will overtake Ether in market cap. While that has not happened yet, the rising price suggests it is not impossible.
Solana Is Taking The Lead Over Ethereum
Ethereum killer Solana has displayed remarkable performance in recent months. Solana consistently ranks among the top weekly gains, while Ether remains rather flat.
According to TradingView data, the SOL/ETH trading pair surged to a new high of approximately $0.06995 ETH on Wednesday.
At the time of writing, SOL had gained 5.8% over the past 24 hours to trade at $176.44. Solana is notably the best-performing asset among the top 10 in the past week, with a 15.7% gain, while ether saw a 3% drop.
Despite Ether’s leading market cap of around $302 billion, considerably outpacing SOL’s $82 billion, recent shifts have sparked speculations about its potential to usurp the pioneer smart contracts platform in the foreseeable future.
Open Interest Spikes
Following this development, open interest in SOL futures markets has been on a tear. Coinglass data shows that open interest has rocketed to over 19 million SOL, or $3.43 billion—the highest amount in notional value since early 2023.
Open interest refers to unsettled futures bets or the total amount of money allocated in open futures contracts. It is one of the most suitable ways to determine whether fresh cash flows into the market.
The consistent growth in OI could be connected to SOL’s price recovery, which implies that traders are increasingly getting involved in speculative activity related to the asset.
“ETH might actually never go to all-time highs again,” widely-followed trader Jack observes:
“SOL is really doing what I didn’t think was ever actually possible: replacing the network as a whole and taking all its users.”
The price of SOL could continue soaring if the open interest maintains the upsurge. If this happens, then retaking $185 will not be a hard task for the cryptocurrency. This is because skyrocketing money allocated to contracts alongside a rising price bolsters the bullish uptrend.
