Amid the rally in altcoins, Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) emerged as a top performer as investors saw value in the token. In September, Visa announced revolutionizing cross-border payments with Solana. Meanwhile, crypto fund inflows have surged above $1 billion in 2023 led by Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana.

Price Action: At the time of writing, Solana's price jumped 4% in the past hour trading taking the past 24-hour trading gains to around 19%. With a 50% monthly gain, Solana is currently changing hands at $66.53 which marks its highest since the same period last year.

In the past 24 hours, trading volume surged 12% while market cap swelled by 19%. Notably, market cap since the same time last year has multiplied more than five times, giving it a strong foothold in the crypto space.  

Also Read: Solana Hits New Annual High At $58 — Analyst Predicts 'Ethereum Killer' Could Skyrocket To $1,000

Separately, data from the decentralized finance (DeFi) tracking platform, Defi Llama, showed a significant increase in the dollar value of Solana locked in smart contracts, as reported by CoinGape.

Total value locked since the start of October expanded by $233 million to $557 million. In the past 24 hours, active addresses (130,554) within the Solana deFi sector also increased.

Cathie Wood’s Strong Push For Solana: The rally comes just a day after ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood talked about Solana’s performance this year on CNBC's Squawk Box.

“Solana is doing a really good job. Ether was faster and cheaper than Bitcoin [back] in the day — that’s how we got Ether. Solana is even faster and [more] cost-effective than Ether,” she said.

She also mentioned that despite higher downtime on Solana’s network, people are agreeing to put up with it as they want “speed and cost as their top priority.”

Read Next: Why Are FTX-Linked Wallets Transferring Solana, Despite The Significant Rally?

Other Developments U.S.-based fintech company CFX Labs announced it raised $9.5 million in seed investments to expand its Solana blockchain-based stablecoin payment and remittances network globally, as reported by CoinDesk.

The CFX Labs’ payment network sends and receives fiat dollars overseas to countries such as India, Mexico and Nigeria using its proprietary stablecoin fxUSD and the Solana blockchain as payment rail for transactions.