The bull run in Solana (SOL) extends into Friday as it soars to new ATHs, registering weekly gains of over 70%, and overtakes Dogecoin to become the seventh largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. At the time of writing, SOL/USDT is trading around $143.01.

Although its price has pulled back slightly from its ATH touched in the previous session, several fundamental developments are supporting the bullish momentum which could take it to newer highs in the coming sessions. One of the biggest drivers of the gains in Solana has been the stellar rise in its popularity among DeFi projects. According to numbers from DeFi Llama, in a span of just one month, the TVL of DeFi protocols on its network has risen by three times, from around $1.2 billion in the beginning of August to over $3.8 billion till date.

Solana’s bullish moves are also enjoying support from news of music streaming platform Audius launching its NFT integration on the blockchain after its collectibles generated transactions worth $60 million over the past week alone. The integration will give access to Solana’s high speed network and low transaction fees to more than six million users of Audius, driving up activity on the blockchain and sending the value of SOL higher as a result.

The potential Ethereum killer has gained a distinct advantage over the current leading DeFi platform especially as its transition from PoW to PoS takes longer to accomplish. This has made Ethereum’s blockchain far more inefficient, with users reporting network congestion issues and high gas fees, driving DeFi protocols towards other alternatives. Solana has been one of the most attractive options as it is highly energy efficient, conducts fast transactions at a fraction of the cost of Ethereum, and is more scalable, allowing it to add more users without compromising the quality of service.

According to leading crypto trader and analyst who uses the pseudonym Smart Contracter, Solana could easily head towards the $200 mark and even overtake it. In a recent update on Twitter, he shares the following observation about SOL: “This really does feel like an easy set and forget long-term play, path of least resistance is up.”

Key Levels to Watch

On the H4 price chart of SOL/USDT, moving averages and leading technical indicators MACD and momentum are exhibiting a strong bullish bias. Although, the Stochastics RSI suggests some selling interest as well.

Solana’s price has broken past two key resistance levels at $106.02 and $117.82 as it heads towards new highs. With the bullish mood still going strong, it looks like the next hurdle buyers will encounter is the resistance at $149.61 coming up soon.