Solana is mooning, and all coins within SOL ecosystem follow the leader

• Solana leads altcoins in the SOL ecosystem toward a price rally.
• Solana's latest spike in investor confidence comes from the network's fast transaction processing and scaling potential.
• Heightened institutional interest builds up in Solana, contributing to the altcoin's gains.

Traders holding Solana and coins of the SOL ecosystem are rewarded for their patience as the high-speed blockchain network hits a new all-time high.

Bulls push Solana ecosystem coins higher

The Solana blockchain focuses on speed, efficiency and security. It offers faster transaction processing at a relatively lower cost when compared to the Ethereum blockchain. This has attracted users to decentralized applications like NFT marketplace Solanart, built on the SOL network. 

Solana has outperformed top cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum several times in 2021; traders earned nearly 1,900% in profits by holding SOL for a year. Since SOL has a robust Layer 1, it eliminates the need for Layer 2 or scaling solutions (like MATIC that facilitates faster transactions for Ethereum).

On August 16, SOL noted the most significant social spike (social media mentions) in its 16-month history based on Santiment data. The euphoria pushed the altcoin to rank ninth among top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

Solana Social Dominance

At the time of writing, coins in the SOL ecosystem, like Chainlink (LINK), The Graph (GRT), Waves (WAVES) and Audius (AUDIO), are rallying. Most Solana-powered coins have noted double-digit gains close to 100% in the past seven days. 

Solana ecosystem coins

One of the factors that triggered a rally in the SOL ecosystem is the launch of Solana's "Cross-chain" called Wormhole. 

Wormhole connects Solana and the decentralized finance (DeFi) network and supports inter-blockchain message transfers. Itwent live on August 9, ahead of the price rise. 

The interoperability protocol is facilitating communication between tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), price data and blockchains that previously did not communicate with each other. Wormhole currently supports Terra, Ethereum and the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). 

Traders can move assets and pass on messages without a lag on Wormhole, and it has set the stage for projects that plan to add cross-chain liquidity. This would boost the utility of Solana and the coins of the dApps in the Solana ecosystem. 

Wormhole exposes crypto coins on the SOL blockchain to a liquidity boost and offers non-native assets an opportunity to enter SOL's DeFi ecosystem. 

Solana's current price rally likely marks the beginning of a prolonged one since its competitors like the Ethereum blockchain that support dApps are plagued by high gas fees and network congestion issues when transactions hit a peak on the network. 

Data from FalconX, a crypto focused brokerage and trading platform, shows that trading shops are piling in while hedge funds go short. Interest from crypto-focused institutions suggests a bullish outlook on SOL's price, and keeping in line with the narrative, Solana trading volumes have nearly doubled on FalconX. 

Solana's decentralized finance ecosystem has grown exponentially. The market capitalization of all tokens staked in Solana-based dApps is fast approaching $2 billion. 

The team behind SOL claims that its blockchain is capable of processing more than 50,000 transactions a second. This claim rivals Visa's 65,000 transaction messages a second. Through "Wormhole," the "Ethereum killer" plans to take on competitors like Cardano, Polkadot and traditional finance payment leaders like Visa. 

The cryptocurrency analyst behind the Twitter handle @Pentosh1 suggested that SOL is in price discovery mode, and a drop between $56 to $60 should be considered a buying opportunity or a "steal."

Overall, the price rally of SOL ecosystem coins is set to continue with a further liquidity boost from Wormhole and the increasing interest of retail traders.