Solana (SOL) price prediction: Will the altcoin outperform its main rivals in performance?

While Solana is up just 5% over the past year, global sentiment around the altcoin is bullish due to its potential technical capabilities

Global sentiment around Solana (SOL) is bullish as the asset’s technical potential to outperform its main rivals in performance is being realized, putting it in contention for inclusion in a US digital asset stockpile.

Solana’s Firedancer validator client, expected to leave testnet in 2025, is demonstrating transaction-per-second capabilities exceeding one million in test environments, a development that is being touted as a solution to core blockchain scalability challenges.

This leap in performance, designed to enhance network stability, is occurring as Solana is gaining attention from both government and corporate sectors.

The asset’s potential inclusion in a US digital asset stockpile and a trend of public companies converting treasury reserves to SOL are highlighting the technical promise of the network.

Solana Firedancer validator

The Firedancer validator client, developed by Jump Crypto, addresses historical criticisms of Solana’s network stability and client homogeneity.

It introduces a C++ client alongside the original Rust-based version to foster client diversity and mitigate the risk of a single bug causing a complete network halt.

This client architecture, featuring a custom networking stack and optimized cryptography, enables it to achieve peak performance exceeding one million transactions per second in test settings.

This surpasses the reported capabilities of both Ethereum and Stellar, rendering Firedancer among the fastest platforms in testing for throughput capacity.

A hybrid version of the client, known as Frankendancer, has been live on the mainnet with early adopters since September 2024, with the full mainnet release planned for later this year.

The successful deployment of this technology is crucial for attracting enterprise-grade applications that demand high network reliability and stability.

Alongside these technical advancements, the Solana community should keep abreast of policy developments in the United States.

An Executive Order signed on March 6 established a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” and a separate “U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile” for non-bitcoin assets.

While the order itself does not mention specific altcoins, President Donald Trump’s statement on March 3 included Solana in the broader US strategic crypto initiative.

As the Federal Register outlines, any government holding of Solana would fall under the “Digital Asset Stockpile,” which is funded by assets forfeited to the U.S. Treasury.

“The "United States Digital Asset Stockpile," capitalized with all digital assets owned by the Department of the Treasury, other than BTC, that were finally forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings and that are not needed to satisfy requirements.”

This framework does not mandate active market purchases of SOL, but its potential inclusion provides a level of official recognition that could influence institutional perception.

Given the rise in memecoin activity on Solana and the prevalence of rug pulls, the potential for government seizures of SOL has increased.

Seized crypto could be used to capitalize the government’s digital asset stockpile and may be held indefinitely.

Like the strategic Bitcoin reserve, the U.S. government has no immediate plans to purchase any digital assets, rendering criminal forfeiture as the primary avenue for the government to acquire crypto.

However, given the SEC’s declaration of memecoins as non-securities, law enforcement's ability to prosecute rug pulls becomes more complex, potentially impacting the types of seized assets flowing into the stockpile.

Institutional adoption of Solana

This institutional narrative is further supported by activity in the corporate sector.

In late May, SOL Strategies, a publicly traded company, announced it had fully divested its Bitcoin position to focus its treasury exclusively on Solana, holding approximately CAD $100 million in SOL.

The company also filed a preliminary base shelf prospectus to potentially raise up to $1 billion for future investments in the Solana ecosystem.

Leah Wald, CEO of SOL Strategies, stated that the company is "all in on Solana," aligning its treasury with validator growth and long-term ecosystem investment.

Other firms like Classover Holdings and DeFi Development Corporation are also building substantial SOL-based treasuries, showcasing an emerging trend of corporate capital shifting into the Solana ecosystem for primary asset holdings.