Solana (SOL) has been in a steady downtrend for the past 3 months, but some traders believe that it may have bottomed at $26.80 on Oct. 21. Lately, there’s been a lot of speculation on the causes for the underperformance and some analysts are pointing to competition from Aptos Network.
The Aptos blockchain launched on Oct. 17 and it claims to handle three times more transactions per second than Solana. Yet, after four years of development and millions of dollars in funding, the debut of the layer-1 smart contract solution was rather unimpressive.
It is essential to highlight that Solana presently holds an $11.5 billion market capitalization at the $32 nominal price level, ranking it as the seventh largest cryptocurrency when excluding stablecoins. Despite its size, SOL’s year-to-date performance reflects a lackluster 82% drop, while the broader global market capitalization is down 56%.
Unfortunate events have negatively impacted SOL’s price
The downtrend accelerated on Oct. 11 after a leading decentralized finance application on the Solana Network suffered a $116 million hack.
Mango Markets’ oracle was attacked due to the low liquidity on the platform’s native Mango (MNGO) token which is used for…