Why This Ethereum Alternative Is Grabbing Eyes Amid Crypto Markets Carnage

An alternative to Ethereum (ETH) saw heightened interest on a day when cryptocurrency market capitalization eroded by 18.51%.

What Happened: Solana (SOL) — a six-month-old cryptocurrency — founded by Anatoly Yakovenko and designed by a team of engineers from big tech companies such as Intel, Dropbox and Qualcomm is viewed as an alternative to ETH by some experts, reported Cointelegraph.

SOL has also attracted the attention of decentralized finance projects such as Serum, which is hosted on it.

11) Serum is built on the @solana blockchain. Solana can process 10,000 times as much as Ethereum; and it’s 1,000,000 times cheaper.

And unlike many side chains, Solana is a fully fledged, decentralized blockchain with over 100 validators.

— SBF (@SBF_Alameda) July 27, 2020

Why It Matters: Other than being pitched as an ETH alternative, SOL is also likely to benefit from the OCC announcement that banks can use stablecoins for payment activities, noted Cointelegraph.

SOL traded 18.17% lower at $3 at press time, while ETH was down 21.1% lower at $1,069.54.

At its listing, SOL traded between $0.50 to 0.91 in April and July of 2020. This represents a gain of 500% at the maximum till press-time.

However, it is trading volume where the cryptocurrency has made real headways, with a record $187 million on Jan. 8, as per data from Messari. The maximum trading volume it had seen before 2021 was $20.5 million in late-December.