GM PRO DOers! 😎

What a year it has been for Solana. 🤩

Just over 1 year ago, Solana had a “near-death experience” with the collapse of FTX, the main investor across the ecosystem.

The price of $SOL dipped as low as $8 in January of this year.

Since then, it has risen ~~335% 410% 520%~~ 550% YTD, making it the best-performing asset in the world in 2023 🤯
(every time I come back to edit this report, I have to increase the YTD % because SOL is absolutely rocketing!)

What a ride! 🎢

Interestingly, we wrote a PRO report on January 12, 2023 right after $SOL’s price collapse.

In that report, we suggested that Solana was following in the footsteps of Ethereum in its first bear market of 2018/19.

For those that weren’t around, Ethereum also had a near-death experience during its first bear market, where its price collapsed and everyone called for its death.

$ETH later recovered and went from $85 to $5000 over the next 3 years.

In that report, our prediction was that if the Solana community could band together and continue to ship and improve the tech, then the price of $SOL should do the same as $ETH did.

Check out the incredible similarities between $SOL and $ETH after their respective first bull runs and collapses.

Unbelievable how similar the chart pattern is over their first cycles.

For context, if we zoom out on the ETH chart further, we can see what happened in Ethereum’s next cycle (2020 - 2023)…

A 3.5x from the previous cycle's all-time high!

So, is this what’s in store for SOL this coming cycle or is Solana a 1 hit (cycle) wonder, like almost every other fast and cheap alternative L1 that launched over the years (ie. EOS, Terra Luna, etc.).

In this report, we are going to answer that question by diving into 3 areas:

Upgrades to Solana’s Tech: Are the devs still shipping?
Onchain Metrics: Does Solana still have users?
$SOL Economics and Value Accrual: Is $SOL sustainable?

Solana is one of the most highly discussed blockchains in the industry right now, but if you look on X or YouTube, you’ll notice mixed reviews.

Ethereum maxis will tell you that the tech doesn’t work or that $SOL doesn’t accrue value, while Solana maxis will tell you that $SOL is the best thing since sliced bread & that Ethereum is now useless and $SOL is going to 100x from here.

For the most part, people have no idea what they’re talking about and love to get loud on social platforms to promote their bags.

But let’s forget all of that jargon and take a look under the hood to understand what’s really happening here. 👀🔛⛓

Upgrades to Solana’s Tech 🚀

Solana is attempting to do something that no one has done before: create a blockchain that provides consensus at the speed of light. ⚡