Shiba Inu jumped a whopping 66,300% over the past year, and investors who got in early likely earned life-changing gains. But missing Shiba Inu doesn't mean you've missed the cryptocurrency market long term.
One of the most vibrant ecosystems today is Solana (SOL 4.89%), which has seen an explosion of development and is getting new integrations with crypto giant Coinbase. It may not generate life-changing wealth in a matter of months, but long term, this is a top cryptocurrency to invest in.
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Solana's booming ecosystem
There's a lot going on in the Solana blockchain, and it's amazing how quickly developers are flocking to the cryptocurrency because of low transaction costs and high speeds.
Solana's largest marketplace, Magic Eden, a venue for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has done 9.2 million SOL (the native crypto on the Solana blockchain) in volume since it launched just seven months ago, which would be about $1.2 billion at today's Solana price. That's still way behind OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace, which averaged $3.7 billion in volume in the first quarter of 2022, according to Dune Analytics.
While dollar volume may be lower, transactions are actually higher on Solana. Magic Eden has done 4.64 million transactions in the past 30 days compared to 2.28 million on OpenSea, indicating that there's more activity, and lower-price NFTs are being bought and sold. Given Solana's growth in NFTs, I like Solana as an ecosystem growth play.
Solana Pay was also announced earlier this year as a payments layer for cryptocurrencies on the Solana blockchain, including stable coins. This could make the Solana blockchain a critical component of the payments infrastructure.
Big players are starting to notice
Solana is starting to be taken seriously by the biggest investors and developers in cryptocurrency as well. OpenSea will support Solana NFTs later this month, and Coinbase has started to add more Solana-based tokens to its exchange.
The Coinbase Wallet browser extension also recently added support for Solana. Users can't yet connect to apps and decentralized finance (DeFi) sites with the wallet, but that support will likely come in the near future.
Cryptocurrencies need infrastructure and developers to build real long-term value, and companies like OpenSea and Coinbase taking Solana seriously is a big step toward a more solid standing for this token.
Follow the developers
The bottom line for Solana is that it has a booming ecosystem of projects being built and billions of dollars in funding coming in. Solana Ventures and others are pouring money into funding DeFi, NFT, marketplace, and other utility projects, all built on Solana.
To put this activity into perspective, 109 daily active programs were running on Solana on Aug. 1, 2021. On April 4, 2022, that number had jumped to 922. Developers are building, and quickly.
If you think the future of cryptocurrency is disruptive real-world applications, a blockchain that's fast, low-cost, and built for scale is the best one to bet on. That's what Solana is built for, and it's why developers are increasingly moving to this blockchain.
Following the developers is a great strategy in cryptocurrency. Developers are moving to Solana, so investors should too.
