Crypto Token Tied to Sam Bankman-Fried Is Now the Year’s Best Performer

tech.hindustantimes.com:

 Almost a year after the demise of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire, one of the blockchain projects most associated with the now disgraced entrepreneur is emerging from under the cloud his downfall cast over the digital-asset world. 

Solana's SOL token has surged about 340% to $41 in 2023, outdoing the 114% rally in market bellwether Bitcoin and becoming the best performing token among the largest cryptocurrencies tracked by Bloomberg. That follows a 94% drop last year as Bankman-Fried's FTX and Alameda Research — two major backers of the project - collapsed into bankruptcy.

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The token has doubled over the last 30-days amid the launch of a software solution dubbed Firedancer and the broader rally in the crypto market. Testing of the Firedancer network was announced this week at a Solana-themed Breakpoint conference in Amsterdam that attracted developers, investors and users of the blockchain.

Solana is among the blockchains competing with Ethereum, crypto's key commercial highway, for a bigger share of digital-asset activity. It differentiates itself by offering lower transaction costs and faster processing speeds. VanEck Associates wrote in a recent report that the Firedancer update “promises to exceed Solana's current capacity by a factor of 10.”    

Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck Associates, told Bloomberg that SOL's recovery this year is proof that the project has moved beyond the FTX overhang.

“One or a handful of layer-one smart contract platforms are likely to capture the majority of value intermediated by open-source blockchains. We think Solana is undervalued based on the probability we ascribe to SOL being the first blockchain to host an application