The superfast blockchain Solana (SOL) is on a strong rally which has pushed it past Ripple’s XRP to become the sixth largest cryptocurrency by market cap and continues its bull run despite the downbeat mood in the wider crypto sector. At the time of writing, SOL/USDT is trading around $209.11.

The potential Ethereum killer has seen interest and volatility soar lately, initially powered by the positive mood among investors towards cryptocurrencies a few weeks back and then due to the soaring popularity of its ecosystem in attracting more DeFi and NFT projects. With the DeFi and NFT space continuing to surge ahead, more projects are looking to build on Solana’s network which has higher efficiency owing to fast transactions and low costs.

Rising Adoption of Solana’s Blockchain

There are several promising fundamental developments that are supporting the upbeat mood towards the SOL token at the moment. For starters, Delta Exchange – a crypto derivatives platform, recently allowed its users to start futures trading in Solana. Traders can use its platform for trading SOL with daily maturities, and soon the exchange will add weekly and monthly maturities’ options as well.

In addition, liquidity staking protocol Lido Finance recently expanded its offerings to include Solana as well, letting its users stake SOL on its protocol to generate rewards. The platform is extremely popular among ETH users, giving them a reliable way to leverage their holdings to provide liquidity and generate rewards.

Popular crypto analyst and trader Lark Davis is also extremely bullish on Solana, observing how its popularity among developers and NFTs is soaring lately. Solana’s blockchain already supports a TVL of almost $8 billion till date, a meteoric rise from around $1.3 billion in early August.

Key Levels to Watch

On the H4 price chart of SOL/USDT, moving averages and the MACD are exhibiting a strong bullish bias among investors. However, the momentum and Stochastic indicators suggest some presence of sellers in the market as well.

Solana’s price has broken past the pivot point at $128.73 and overcome resistances at $163.87 and $185.75. Further buying pressure can take the price past the current ATH and towards greater heights until investors encounter resistance at $242.77.