Solana has slowly made its way into being the crypto sweetheart of 2021. The smart contracts platform had found popularity in the third quarter of the year as it rallied to new all-time highs following the massive adoption of the blockchain. It didn’t take long before the blockchain was being listed as an “Ethereum killer” placing it in competition with the likes of Ethereum and Cardano.
Solana has lived up to expectations since then as it stole more market share with each passing week. Decentralized finance (DeFi) services on the blockchain quickly took off as investors sought out cheaper alternatives to Ethereum.
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Solana still holds a small share of the DeFi market compared to Ethereum but the blockchain has quickly grown to be a force to be reckoned with when it comes to staking.
Solana Takes The Lead For Staking
For a long time, competitor Cardano held bragging rights as the network with the most staked cryptocurrency. Now that title has been stolen by Solana as staking ramped up on the network. It now stands ahead of Cardano and Ethereum for total value staked on the blockchain.
Staking has become one of the leading ways for investors to make passive income while they held on to their coins. This has propelled the rise of digital assets like ETH and ADA to the forefront of the market given that these networks offered attractive yields to users.
However, Solana has quickly become the network of choice due to offering some of the highest yields compared to competitors Ethereum and Cardano. On November 23rd, Solana became the network with the highest value of tokens staked when total value had crossed $84 billion. This number put it right ahead of market leaders Cardano and Ethereum.
Solana staked value surpasses Cardano | Source | Staking Rewards
Solana’s yields currently have 77.37% of its total supply staked at an annual yield of 6.79%. Compared to this, Cardano has 70.5% of total supply staked at an annual yield of 5.71%, while Ethereum has only 6.85% of total supply staked with an annual yield of 5.2%.
Make Way For The “Ethereum Killers”
Activity on other smart contract platforms is ramping up as competition grows for Ethereum. Although the network still sees the most activity for DeFi and NFT minting, others such as Solana and Cardano are creeping up on the blockchain.
For the month of November, Cardano’s network activity has spiked considerably above that of Ethereum, suggesting more usage on the part of the former. Likewise, activities like NFT minting and DeFi services are ramping up on Solana, with Cardano expecting its first DEXes to launch soon.
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Cardano had also recorded a spike in new staking wallets, with over 100K staking wallets added in the space of two months. Furthermore, Cardano’s new and active wallets had increased dramatically for the month of November, signaling growing adoption.
Solana received high praise from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried who hailed the cryptocurrency as a potential candidate for being the next Bitcoin.
SOL maintains value above $210 | Source: SOLUSD on TradingView.com
Featured image from CNBC, chart from TradingView.com