SOL becomes 4th in market cap, overtaking BNB

Solana (SOL) token has surpassed BNB from the Binance cryptocurrency exchange in terms of market capitalization.

SOL’s capitalization reached $41.724 billion, and BNB’s capitalization was $41.721, according to CoinMarketCap. However, Solana’s trading volumes are more than three times higher than BNB’s in the last 24 hours.

The price of SOL has increased by 78% over the month and by 15% in the last 24 hours amid rapid growth in market capitalization. On Dec. 20 the token overtook Ripple’s XRP in market capitalization and broke into the top 5 of the ranking. The growth of Solana’s price has caused an increase in interest in the ecosystem and activity on the blockchain.

The number of Google searches for “Solana” also increased by 250% from the beginning of October to the beginning of December.

In addition to the network’s native token, other tokens issued on the Solana chain have also recently increased in price. Meme coin Bonk (BONK) rose in price by more than 10,000% and entered the list of the most significant crypto assets.

Solana stands out with its hybrid consensus mechanism, combining Proof of Stake and Proof of History, enabling more efficient transaction processing than Bitcoin’s Proof of Work and Ethereum’s Proof of Stake. It also excels in transaction speed and capacity, handling around 65,000 transactions per second, and offers significantly lower transaction fees compared to both Ethereum and Bitcoin.

It is noteworthy that last year, after the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, which was one of the leading investors of Solana, many predicted the end of the ecosystem. The exit of a key investor from the market and the risks of a coin sale triggered the fall of Solana.

With SOL freed from pressure from a powerful partner, the project’s fate no longer seems unclear, a situation some see as increasing Solana’s investment attractiveness.