Solana Up Double Digits as Helium Network Announces Merger Date

Solana bulls are back in action.

SOL, the native token powering the layer-1 blockchain Solana, has gained more than 11% overnight and is the biggest winner of the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, according to data from Coingecko.

At the time of writing, SOL is trading around $26.09, pulling back from its new 90-day high of $26.96 earlier today.

Weekly, the so-called Ethereum killer has gained as much as 21% and is now the 12th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Last week’s price action pushed Solana’s market cap past the $10 billion mark for the first time since the crash amid the November 2022 FTX collapse.

Nearly $5.86 million in Solana futures positions have been liquidated in the past 24 hours, according to data from Coinglass.

Of total liquidations, 70.26% of positions totaling $4.12 million were blown shorts.

Red bars show blown out short trades. Source: Coinglass.

Despite Solana’s heroics over the past week, SOL is still down 89.81% from its all-time high of $259.96 in November 2021.

Solana bulls on the rise

The main catalysts behind the rise of SOL are the impending migration of the Helium network to Solana and a surge in Solana-based NFT trading volumes.

Founded in 2019, Helium is a decentralized network of devices called “hotspots” that provides long-range connectivity for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The network runs on the blockchain of the same name.

Merging with Solana will allow Helium developers to focus on adding more hotspots instead of maintaining the blockchain.

“With the ability to power thousands of transactions per second, combined with its vast ecosystem of developers, applications and integrations, Solana has the speed and scale needed to take on blockchain responsibility,” read a recent blog post about the merge event.

The migration is expected to take place next month on March 27. As for HNT, Helium’s native token, it is up about 6% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.

NFT trading activity is also increasing on Solana. Solana-based NFT revenue grew 12.68% in the past 24 hours to $2.63 million as per Cryptoslam data.

During the same period, Ethereum-based NFT sales plummeted 10.57%.