Solana’s native token, SOL, saw a 5% increase on May 27, climbing from $161 on May 26 to $171. This rise has fueled investor optimism, especially since SOL reached $188.90 on May 21. A significant driver of SOL’s upward movement is a recent proposal aimed at increasing yields for validators instead of burning tokens. However, on-chain data suggests that SOL might struggle to overcome the resistance at $190.
Changes in Transaction Fee Policy
On May 27, Solana’s validators approved the SIMD-0096 proposal, eliminating the 50% burn rate on priority transactions. From epoch 621 onward, all transaction fees will be allocated to block producers. This change aims to motivate validators to prioritize network security and efficiency over arbitrage strategies, such as reordering or excluding transactions.
Maximal extractable value (MEV) refers to the profits block producers make by determining the order of transaction processing on the blockchain. Validators can choose which pending transactions to include in each block, often disadvantaging regular users who might face poorer execution prices in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
Potential Inflationary Impact
Despite the benefits of the new fee policy, some, like Solana staking validator Laine, argue that it could make SOL more inflationary. Laine notes that despite the annual issuance increase of 4.6%, the absence of priority fees in May 2023 suggests the effective inflation rate could rise to approximately 9.9% annually.
Market Reactions and Comparisons
Some analysts believe SOL’s recent price adjustment is partly due to a reaction to the approval of an Ether exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States. The SEC’s approval on May 23 pushed ETH to $3,975 on May 27, nearing its 2024 peak of $4,090.
Analyst and investor ‘gumshoe’ suggests that traders turned bearish on SOL following the Ether spot ETF approval, describing it as a “once in a lifetime bull catalyst.” He argues that the market has overly focused on the Ether ETF decision, despite SOL’s year-to-date gains of 69% being close to Ether’s 72% in the same period.
Also Read: Standard Chartered Predicts Solana and Ripple ETFs by 2025
Stagnant Network Activity
Despite varying opinions on the impact of eliminating the burn mechanism, Solana’s network usage growth has been sluggish, especially compared to Ethereum and its layer-2 solutions.
Recent data from DappRadar shows a mere 5% increase in Solana’s decentralized application (DApps) volumes over the past week, significantly underperforming compared to Ethereum’s 52% increase. The BNB Chain saw a 22% increase in the same period, highlighting Solana’s relative underperformance.
In terms of active users, Solana saw a 6% weekly decline in unique active addresses, close to Ethereum’s 4% decrease. However, competitors like BNB Chain and Polygon saw increases in active users by 25% or more. Solana’s second-largest decentralized exchange, Raydium, experienced a 16% drop in users this week, while its NFT marketplace, Magic Eden, saw a 22% decline.
