Key Highlights
- SOL maintains levels above $120 for the first time since late January, gaining approximately 8% over the past week.
- The Alpenglow protocol upgrade launched on devnet September 25, targeting 150ms transaction finality speeds.
- Solana ETFs in the United States recorded their highest daily inflow of $86.67M on September 25.
- The network’s stablecoin market capitalization reached a new peak of $17.394 billion.
- On September 24, Solana’s on-chain trading volume surpassed major centralized exchanges including Coinbase, Bybit, and Kraken.
Solana’s native token has pushed beyond the $120 threshold this week, marking its first sustained hold at this price point since the final days of January. The digital asset posted approximately 8% gains across a seven-day period, continuing a rebound trajectory that began near $75 in early August.
On September 26, SOL changed hands at $121.19. Despite recent gains, the token remains approximately 58% beneath its January 2025 high of $294.
Market participants are focusing on $130 as the next significant resistance point. Technical analysis of the four-hour chart reveals SOL trading within an ascending channel pattern, accompanied by a relative strength index reading of 63.09.
This indicator level suggests healthy momentum while staying below overbought territory. Meanwhile, the Chaikin Money Flow registered 0.09, indicating constructive capital flows supporting the recent advance.
Network Upgrade Promises Speed Improvements
The Alpenglow protocol upgrade arrived on devnet September 25. Development company Anza verified the milestone one day following a testnet transition.
In a statement shared on X, Anza announced: “Alpenglow is officially running on devnet. The handoff completed at slot 504148999: Alpenglow genesis block formed and TowerBFT is retired. App developers: test your programs and integrations now during our observation period leading up to mainnet-beta migration.”
This technical enhancement seeks to reduce transaction finality duration from 12.8 seconds down to approximately 150 milliseconds. Transaction finality represents the moment when a blockchain transaction becomes irreversible.
Improved finality speeds could enable cryptocurrency exchanges to confirm deposits more rapidly. Since mainnet deployment remains pending, end users have yet to experience these performance improvements.
Market analyst Crypto Patel highlighted an alternative price threshold deserving attention. In an X post, Patel observed that SOL had regained $120 after an eight-month absence, but identified $150 as the critical level for trend confirmation, suggesting a weekly close above this point might trigger rallies toward $250, $500, and potentially $1,000.
Patel further mentioned that failure to break $150 resistance could trigger a pullback toward $75, which was characterized as a potential accumulation zone.
Institutional Investment and On-Chain Metrics
Spot Solana exchange-traded funds in the United States attracted $86.67 million in net capital on September 25. This figure represents the largest single-day inflow since these investment products debuted.
Bitwise’s BSOL accounted for $55.73 million of the total. Grayscale’s GSOL contributed $18.47 million, while Morgan Stanley’s MSOL captured $5.96 million.
Over the seven-day period, inflows totaled $181 million, representing the second-strongest weekly performance recorded. Combined assets under management across these ETF products reached $1.96 billion.
The value of stablecoins on Solana also established a new benchmark, climbing to $17.394 billion on September 25. This represents more than a sixfold increase from April 2024 levels.
Daily active addresses on the Solana network exceeded 8 million, surpassing the aggregate total across all other monitored blockchain networks. September 24 saw Solana’s decentralized exchange spot volume reach $2.69 billion, outpacing major centralized platforms including Coinbase, Bybit, and Kraken.
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