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‘Dark horse’ Solana is backed to outpace Ethereum with Finder’s expert panel predicting SOL closing 2021 at $235.??Solana (SOL), destined to end the year at $235 on average (1) before skyrocketing to $1,178 by the end of 2025. Finder’s panel of 50 fintech specialists predict SOL’s ‘technical architecture’ will give it an edge over ETH.
Despite Solana’s network experiencing a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in September 2021, sentiment from Finder experts remained upbeat when considering its immediate and long-term growth.
Gavin Smith, general partner at Panxora Crypto I hedge fund, shared Solana will be worth $250 by the end of 2021 and said,
“SOL is one of a few smart contract-based blockchains that have the technical architecture that will be difficult for Ethereum to compete with on the basis of transaction speed and transaction cost. For smart contract usage especially in DeFi these factors are a critical success indicator.”
SOL’s fast transactions proved favorable among Finder experts, with Linda Kreitzman, partner at Oxpartners.com, stating that “transactions are faster on Solana” than on Ethereum.
Wider support of SOL’s time-saving benefits are backed by Francisco Rodrigues at Cointelegraph, who said,
“Ethereum just can’t compete with the speed of transactions on Solana which developers may increasingly look at.”?
Some panelists were neutral, stating that SOL could “probably just go in lockstep with the coming inflation,” while noting its opportunity for growth was tied to there being “a lot of work to do.”
Finder’s global cryptocurrency editor Keegan Francis thinks that Solana will grow with inflation alongside the rest of the market with Bitcoin “crushing everything in the long-term.”
On September 15, 2021, Bloomberg covered what the Solana blackout revealed about the fragility of crypto.
Finder’s experts were divided over the offline episode:
- 40% considered it ‘only a hiccup’
- 40% declared it was ‘a problem’
- 20% were ‘unsure’
Gavin Smith saw it as a ‘hiccup’ and noted a timeframe when considering Solana’s stability,
“The proof will be how resilient it proves to be over the next two years.”??
Martin Froehler, CEO of Morpher, noted a larger issue at play,
“It uncovered a much bigger fundamental problem with Solana its lack of decentralization.”??
Daniel Polotsky, founder and chief advisor of CoinFlip, said,
“Unsure. The fact that the entire Solana network can be taken down like this is an indicator that it has a long way to go in terms of adequate stability and decentralization.”
However, he still supported the opportunity of the SOL’s future,
“I do believe it can eventually get there.”
Jeremy Britton, CFO at BostonTrading.co, appeared unshaken by SOL’s 17-hour absence,
“Small hiccups on the way to greatness are inevitable.”
He added a testament to its strength,
“SOL went down for a few hours, but it did not get hacked, stolen or crippled.”
‘Security’ and ‘trust’ were buzzwords amid the responses Finder collected on SOL’s DDoS attack. 40% of experts agreed it was an ‘inherent problem.’
Joseph Raczynski, technologist and futurist at Thomson Reuters, predicted more events of this kind to come,
“Many new players in this field simply do not invest enough in cyber security. Without the ability to dissuade DDoS attacks through a mechanism that makes it too expensive, these attacks will persist.”
Although safety and user confidence were deemed at risk by some experts, overall SOL’s proof-of-history network was supported by 51%, agreeing it was an avenue for potentially gaining the edge over ETH.
SOL’s growth capabilities were backed by 28% of panelists predicting it will close 2021 at $300 or above.
Alex Nagorskii, funds management operations at DigitalX Ltd, said,
“Solana has been enjoying spectacular growth this year, buoyed by strong features such as exceptionally high transaction speed. It has been able to ride the success of some NFT projects launched on their blockchain. Until Ethereum solves their issues with scalability, it is likely Solana will continue to perform strongly. However, as shown by the DDoS attack, it is yet to nail down the security aspect of its network. Long-term competitiveness is difficult to predict, monitoring the market share the network is able to capture in the various sectors of crypto continues to be the best indicator for us when determining our position in Solana.”??
Morpher CEO Martin Froehler strongly backed SOL, foreseeing 2021 closing at $800 and simply stating,
“I hope they don’t have to reboot again.”??
Paul Levy, senior lecturer at the University of Brighton, shared a modest $170 for 2021 and cited a stratospheric rise to $3,000 in 2025.
“There is a lot of potential here and I expect steady growth but this may well come from new users rather than stealing market share.”
With user growth being critical to SOL’s success, crypto fans were updated with news that Solana is poised to add “millions of new users” as it partners with Brave browser. Brave will integrate the Solana blockchain into the Brave browser, providing default Solana ecosystem support to Brave’s 42 million monthly active users and 1.3 million verified creators.
A handful of panelists, including Johannes Schweifer, CEO from CoreLedger AG, were unsure of giving clear predictions, citing,
“[It was] frankly difficult to estimate as SOL does not necessarily have to become a token for speculation such as ETH.”
Last week SOL was reported as “down 6% in the past 24 hours and fallen 9.1% in the past week” by fool.com, with “no single factor causing cryptocurrencies to fall right now.” SOL climbed again in recent days and fool.com’s Chris MacDonald called out gains of “nearly 10%.”
With SOL’s true staying power under daily scrutiny, Finder’s expert Gunnar Jav makes a timely observation, stating,
“Solana has a lot of work to do.”
Read the full report over at Finder.
(1) Finder surveyed 50 fintech specialists from September 24 to October 11, 2021. Panelists may own some cryptocurrencies, including Solana.? We assessed survey results using a truncated mean, with the top and bottom 10% of outlying results removed.
Zak Killermann is a writer at Finder who’s been specializing in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology for four years covering everything from ICO booms, crypto winters, memecoins and more. He’s mined and minted cryptocurrencies, and remembers the days when DOGE was just for fun. Zak’s focus is on breaking down technical concepts (like yellow papers) for the average folk to digest on their morning commute. Before diving into all things crypto, Zak contributed to Finder’s money transfers vertical.
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