Solana Lost More Than $8 Billion Market Cap in Last 2 Months, What's Next?

The value of the DeFi token Solana (SOL) continues to decrease as concerns persist regarding the network's apparent strong relationship with the FTX crypto exchange, which has subsequently declared bankruptcy.

Now, Solana is trading at $9.63, representing a decrease of 15.4% over the preceding week. The SOL price crashed at one time down to $8.14, which was its lowest price since February 19, 2021.

The quick collapse in price has been exacerbated, in particular, by the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX. SOL has seen its market value decrease by more than $1 billion in the past week, going from $4.36 billion to $3.52 billion at the time of writing.

Vitalik Buterins Views on Solana

In another context, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggested (2) what could be a promising future for Solana. Buterin has indicated that he thinks the Solana ecosystem will have the chance to grow when the "awful opportunistic money people" have been purged from the blockchain. Many people have referred to these individuals as "awful money people."

"Some smart people tell me there is an earnest smart developer community in Solana, and now that the awful opportunistic money people have been washed out, the chain has a bright future. Hard for me to tell from the outside, but I hope the community gets its fair chance to thrive."

As a result of the ongoing fallout from the FTX scandal, it would appear that the asset will not achieve its goal of being an "Ethereum (ETH) killer." People's trust in Solana's future has substantially weakened due to the unfortunate events that occurred with the cryptocurrency exchange.

Investors are still attempting to ascertain whether or not the intimate link between the two sides would put Solana's future in peril. When operations were at their busiest, the Solana team received significant assistance from Bankman-Fried and FTX. This fact is particularly notable since it demonstrates how much assistance was offered.

However, Solana co-founder Raj Gokal has stated (3) that the ecosystem is not concerned about the price movement of SOL and that the future appears positive. Gokal has emphasized that the community is not concerned about the price movement of SOL.

"I believe that it will turn out to be incredibly beneficial in the long run." According to Gokal, "we've always heard really negative criticism regarding FTX's involvement in the ecosystem and that concentration of ownership stake."

Departure of Devs and Projects

At the same time, the network is witnessing the exit of many projects and developers. DeGods and Y00ts, for instance, which are two of the most successful projects for issuing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Solana blockchain, have just announced their plan to shift to the Polygon (MATIC) ecosystem.

A data aggregator named Token Terminal has made some intriguing statements, one of which is that the number of Solana developers dropped by nearly 90 percent in 2022. On the other hand, Solana has raised questions (4) about the reliability of the data.