Solana (SOL) Price Fails to Maintain Bullish Momentum After Reaching $134 Level

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice.

Solana's (SOL) native token failed to sustain its bullish momentum after reaching the $134 level on April 14, but an assortment of data points suggest that the altcoin's rally is far from over.

Solana's TVL stands at $6.9 billion, making it the second-largest blockchain. Pulling ahead of competitors such as Tron, Base, and Berachain, Solana's TVL has increased by 12% over the seven days ending April 16.

Solana saw positive signs with a 30% rise in deposits on Sanctum, a liquid staking application, and a 20% growth on Jito and Jupiter.

Solana's DEX volume surpasses Ethereum layer-2s

One could argue that Solana's TVL roughly matches the Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem in deposits. However, this comparison neglects to mention that Solana boasts an exceptionally strong position in decentralized exchange (DEX) volumes.

For instance, in the seven days ending April 16, trading activity on Solana DApps amounted to $15.8 billion, exceeding the combined volume of Ethereum scaling solutions by more than 50% during the same period.

Solana reclaimed the top spot in DEX activity, surpassing Ethereum following a 16% gain over seven days. This was aided by a 44% increase in volume on Pump-fun and a 28% rise on Raydium.

In contrast, volumes declined on the three largest Ethereum DApps - Uniswap, Fluid, and Curve Finance. A similar trend occurred on BNB Chain, where PancakeSwap, Four-Meme, and DODO saw reduced volumes compared to the previous week.

It would be unfair to measure Solana's growth solely by DEX performance, as other DApps handle much smaller volumes. For instance, Ondo Finance tokenized a total of $250 million worth of assets on the Solana network.

Meanwhile, Exponent, a yield farm protocol, doubled its TVL over the past 30 days. Similarly, the yield aggregator platform Synatra experienced a 43% jump in TVL during the past week.

Analysts are optimistic about a Solana spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) being approved in the United States in 2025. However, expectations for substantial inflows are limited due to a general lack of interest from institutional investors and the recent poor performance of similar Ethereum ETF instruments.

If the spot ETF is approved, it could strengthen Solana's presence - especially if the US government's Digital Asset Stockpile plans come to fruition.

Related: Real estate fintech Janover doubles Solana holdings with $10.5M buy

Investors are eagerly awaiting the full audit of US federal agencies' crypto holdings, initially expected by April 7.

However, after missing this deadline and with some journalists suggesting that the executive order signed on March 7 did not require the findings to be made public, there are currently no plans from the government to acquire cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin (BTC).

Currently, there are few catalysts to justify a rally to $180, a level last seen 45 days ago on March 2.

Without external factors causing a large influx of new participants into the crypto ecosystem, the increase in TVL and DEX market share alone is unlikely to push SOL's price to outperform the broader market.