Solana (SOL) price will hit a new record of $500 in 2029, but not until it finds a new market

Until it finds a new market, its price will underperform Ethereum, says Standard Chartered.

Activity on Solana has plummeted since the frenzy over memecoins quickly fizzled out earlier this year, an analyst at Standard Chartered said on Tuesday.

That’s bad news for the blockchain, which saw its moment in the sun earlier this year as users flocked to mint and trade joke coins on the network.

The good news? Solana is expected to hit a new record of $500.

The bad news? It won’t happen until 2029, the analyst said in a note to investors.

That’s because the network doesn’t have a new business engine as powerful as joke coins, the UK bank's analyst said.

While the memecoin frenzy proved the network’s ability to handle high trading volumes at low cost, recent data indicate that this trend has cooled dramatically, said Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered.

More than 70,000 memecoins were launched on Pump.fun at its peak on January 23, according to onchain data.

That figure has since more than halved.

“If meme-related activity has peaked, then activity on Solana is unlikely to bounce back to its January 2025 peak,” Kendrick said.

Solana’s native SOL token hit an all-time high of $293 on January 19, the day after President Donald Trump released his memecoin on the network.

It’s trading at $177 on Tuesday.

And until it finds its next niche, Kendrick predicts that the price of SOL will drag its closest competitor, Ethereum, for at least the next two or three years.

“Solana is in a difficult spot in terms of development,” said Kendrick. “It has proven its ability to handle large transaction volumes via memecoin trading, but that sector is now likely past its peak.”

His predictions coincide with bettors on crypto prediction market Polymarket, giving Solana a 49% chance of breaking a new record in 2025.

Kendrick identifies several key markets that can help Solana outpace its biggest competitor.

He highlighted trading and finance apps that demand high throughput, as well as social media apps.

Each of these sectors would leverage Solana’s advantages, said Hendrick.

But scaling these businesses won’t happen overnight.

“We expect Solana to underperform Ethereum over the next two to three years, before catching up in 2028 and ’29,” Kendrick said.