This May Be Why Solana Surged to $200 Last Week

Solana’s recent surge above $200 may have been triggered by several millions-worth presales that occurred in just a week.

Layer-1 blockchain Solana has been in the spotlight for most of this month as its native coin, SOL, jumped by 30% over the past week. The reason for the surge is not far-fetched, considering that the network hosted multiple presales from Solana-based memecoin and NFT projects, raising over $122 million in SOL.

Solana Host $122M Presales

According to research from the on-chain sleuth ZachXBT, some memecoin and NFT projects conducted 27 presales to raise capital. Typically, presales involve selling tokens to investors at a discounted price. Investors put their money into these projects in hopes that they will yield more gains in the future. The project will equally have more capital to finance its operations.

In this case, investors must purchase SOL to participate in the presale. Zach’s analysis reveals that more than 655,000 SOL coins worth $122.5 million were invested in Solana-based crypto projects like Slerf, Dekadente, KeroNFTs, and others. The on-chain sleuth added that these presales began on March 12, and they exclude crypto projects on other blockchains like Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Base.

These engagements with Solana’s network earned it the title of the meme chain as more than 8,600 memecoins were created in a day. However, some of these projects are likely rug pulls aimed at siphoning funds from unsuspecting users. Even some projects that launched presales may have rugged users because the token addresses were unavailable after the presale.

I was interested to see how much SOL has been sent as a result of the presale meta and calculated >655,000 SOL ($122.5M) raised from 27 presales. pic.twitter.com/dvsW4TSoov

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) March 19, 2024

SOL Flips BNB

Following its latest mainnet engagement, Solana’s native coin saw a significant price surge to over $208. Its market capitalization also soared, flipping BNB, becoming the fourth-largest cryptocurrency.

At press time, SOL traded at $177, representing an 11.5% decline in the past 24 hours.

Source: CoinStats