Ethereum rival Solana jumps on crypto list

NEW YORK. The cryptocurrency linked to the Solana network has jumped to the seventh spot among the world’s top 10 largest virtual coins amid optimism that the blockchain could be a long term competitor to Ethereum.

Solana’s SOL token has tripled in about three weeks and now has a market value of more than $41 billion, according to CoinGecko. Proponents tout the claimed speed and lower cost of transactions on Solana for decentralised finance and digital collectibles, applications where Ethereum dominates.

“Solana has a growing ecosystem, projects are being built on it and it’s benefited hugely from the mania that’s taking place in NFTs,” Antoni Trenchev, co-founder at crypto lender Nexo, wrote in an email. NFTs are non-fungible tokens used to trade digital collectibles.