Solana (SOL) Could Quadruple by End of 2025, Standard Chartered Says

Solana’s SOL token has rebounded 900% since plummeting in the aftermath of crypto exchange FTX’s 2022 collapse.

Solana's (CRYPTO: SOL) native token has rebounded an impressive 900% since plummeting in the aftermath of crypto exchange FTX’s 2022 collapse.

Still, Standard Chartered Bank believes SOL could quadruple by the end of 2025.

At current prices, that would put SOL at $560, valuing the blockchain at $264 billion.

Here are three factors that could determine SOL’s price in the coming months.

The US election: Standard Chartered said its Solana price target is more justifiable if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House for a second term.

A Trump administration “would be more supportive of the broader digital assets ecosystem than a Harris administration,” Standard Chartered global head of digital assets research Geoff Kendrick said in a recent report.

“The introduction of a SOL ETF would also be more likely under a Trump presidency.”

Some investors speculate that a spot Solana exchange-traded fund could be next after the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved spot Ethereum ETFs earlier this year.

Kendrick isn't bearish on SOL under a potential Kamala Harris administration, though. He forecasts that should the vice president win in November, SOL will still double in value.

New Solana tech: Another variable is whether Solana can successfully ramp-up the number of transactions it can handle.

Firedancer, a new validator client being developed by Jump Crypto, is key. It aims to increase Solana’s theoretical throughput from 50,000 transactions per second to over 600,000.

“Current price metrics will only prove sustainable, in our view, if Solana can achieve a 100-400x increase in throughput,” Standard Chartered said. “This would require Firedancer to be active.”

Solana handles around 3,200 transactions per second, according to data dashboard Solana Beach.

There are, however, several risks. Building and launching Firedancer is a massive technical undertaking. A lot could go wrong.

And other newer blockchains like Sui (CRYPTO: SUI) and Aptos (CRYPTO: APT) already claim to offer higher transaction throughput than Solana.

More users: Building the infrastructure for higher throughput is only half the battle — Solana also needs to get more people using it.

Standard Chartered said Solana needs to establish dominance across finance, something it could do via its recent Visa (NYSE:V) partnership.

It could also increase use through consumer apps like decentralized social media platforms and decentralized physical infrastructure networks, or DePINs.

Solana's market value is 250 times the fees it generates. Ethereum, the biggest smart contract network, has a multiple of 121.

This indicates that traders are betting on Solana's future use to justify its high valuation, according to Standard Chartered.

“Solana is richly valued versus ETH on our market value/fee multiple framework (Solana trades at 250x fees versus ETH at 121x),” the report said.

“This either suggests that the market believes that Solana will achieve a much higher multiple on our measure or that Sol is overvalued on a relative basis.”