Don't look now, but Solana (SOL +1.63%) is now the top-performing major cryptocurrency over the past 90 days. During that time period, Solana is up 5%, Ethereum (ETH +3.79%) is up 4%, and Bitcoin (BTC +1.81%) is actually down 6%.
Admittedly, Solana is barely treading water for the year (up less than 1%), which helps to explain why it has flown under the radar of many crypto investors. But there are two big reasons why I'm bullish on Solana headed into 2026.
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1. The arrival of new spot Solana ETFs
People have been talking about the arrival of new spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for Solana since the beginning of the year. There are now seven spot Solana ETF applications awaiting approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and they are coming from some high-profile investment firms, including VanEck, 21Shares, Bitwise, and Fidelity. The final sign-off on these applications was supposed to happen this month.
However, there's just one minor problem: there's a federal government shutdown going on right now, and the SEC can't sign off on the ETFs until the shutdown is over. The growing consensus is that, as soon as the government opens back up for business, then one of the first orders of business at the SEC will be getting these ETFs approved.
The odds for approval look even better if you take a global view. A spot Solana ETF was recently approved in Hong Kong, so it only seems to be a matter of time before they will be approved in the United States.
When that happens, a tsunami of institutional investor money could be headed into Solana. Earlier in the year, JPMorgan Chase (JPM +0.94%) predicted that as much as $6 billion in new money might flow into Solana.
2. A surge in blockchain network activity
There's another factor that could push Solana higher in late 2025: a surge in new activity on the blockchain. Solana is now running on all cylinders, and that's leading to a newfound appreciation for Solana not just as a digital currency, but also as a highly diversified blockchain ecosystem.
Case in point: 21Shares recently released a report on Solana that highlighted a massive surge in revenue generation across its blockchain ecosystem. Over the most recent 12-month period, the Solana blockchain ecosystem helped to generate nearly $3 billion in revenue.
And Solana was hardly a one-trick pony, either. 21Shares noted that strong revenue growth is now coming from trading, meme coins, decentralized finance (DeFi), decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN), and even artificial intelligence (AI). That led 21Shares to declare Solana "one of the most dynamic revenue-generating ecosystems in crypto."
CRYPTO: SOL
Key Data Points
More good things could be on the way in early 2026, when a major new blockchain upgrade (codenamed "Alpenglow") is scheduled to debut. This upgrade is arguably the biggest upgrade in Solana's brief five-year history.
This upgrade should lead to new speed and efficiency improvements for Solana, which is already one of the fastest Layer-1 blockchains around. In August, Solana demonstrated a theoretical transaction processing speed of 100,000 transactions per second.
Where does Solana go from here?
Earlier this summer, there was speculation that Solana might double or triple in value by the end of 2025. That now looks unlikely to happen. However, there are plenty of signs that Solana could be dramatically undervalued. After all, it's only one-fifth the size of Ethereum in terms of market cap, despite being its closest competitor.
In October 2023, investment firm VanEck suggested that Solana might eventually hit a price of $3,200 sometime before 2030. Based on today's price of nearly $200, that's a potential 16-fold gain in just a few years. That lofty estimate was based on continued rapid growth in key segments of the Solana blockchain ecosystem, especially decentralized finance.
Of course, Solana is hardly a no-brainer investment. It's a risky altcoin to buy at a time when many crypto investors are getting skittish about putting their money anywhere else but Bitcoin. But I've seen enough from Solana to be bullish on its prospects heading into 2026. It's now on my buy list as we head into the final weeks of the year.
