New projects, airdrops, high total value locked and a rapidly growing investor interest have enabled Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) to capture the fifth position in top cryptocurrencies by valuation.

What Happened: Solana reported on Wednesday a surge in its valuation to $35.5 billion, ahead of XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) which currently stands at $33.8 billion. Amidst rising popularity and wider adoption of projects, Solana is currently trading at a 20-month high in its market cap.

Price Action: At the time of writing, Solana reported gains of 12.3% in the past 24-hours trade while XRP is up by a marginal 3.3% for the same timeframe; Bitcoin is higher by 4.4%. Notably, Solana’s past 24-hour trading volume has increased by 66.4% compared to 4.2% in XRP and 3.9% in crypto king Bitcoin.  

Based on DefiLlama data, the total value locked (TVL) on Solana stands at $1.79 billion (crossing $1 billion) for the first time since November 2022 when FTX collapsed. FTX had purchased $1 billion worth of Solana-based tokens before it filed for bankruptcy.

Read Also: Solana's Surge Propels Sharp Rise In Google Searches, Analyst Says BONK Also A Catalyst

Solana’s decentralized exchanges (DEX) also saw an expansion in trading volume to $1.26 billion (past 24 hours) compared to Ethereum's trading volume of $1.17 billion. Solana projects Marinade Finance saw a 73% surge in one-month TVL and Jito reported a 52% increase. Marginfi, Kamino and Orca witnessed a 157%, 819%, and 134% surge, respectively, for the same time frame.

Solana’s BONK (CRYPTO: BONK) coin witnessed a significant increase in its market cap to $1.2 billion and a triple-digit (+337%) surge in monthly gains. The past week saw BONK reporting a 68.5% gain.

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Why It Matters: Not only is Solana gaining traction amid the memecoin frenzy, but developments like airdrop mania and the Solana smartphone saga have attracted investors to the Solana ecosystem.

Crypto analyst, Kaleo took to his X account to highlight:

Solana approaching $100.

Avalanche approaching $50.

Bitcoin approaching $50K.

Alts starting to move again across the board.

Memecoins printing.

NFTs waking up.

And it's still four months until the halving.

Holy shit 2024 is going to be insane.

— K A L E O (@CryptoKaleo) December 20, 2023

Among the many crypto analysts and traders who took to their X platform and indicated optimism and enthusiasm around Solana, an X user, Kook said “SOLANA IS THE FUTURE OF CRYPTO!!!!!!!!!”.

An X user, InvestAnswers stated, “I did say we would hit $80 this week (Solana) and we just did it only 24 hours later.”

A former Wall Street macro trader stated, “Not gonna miss the next AI coin… and this baby on Solana. Lets go. Send it to 100mm with haste.”

Not gonna miss the next AI coin… and this baby on Solana. Lets go. Send it to 100mm with haste pic.twitter.com/bCSs8Mx8tA

— Wizard Of SoHo (🍷,🍷) (@wizardofsoho) December 20, 2023

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