Solana (SOL) is making cautious moves around the $160 level early on Monday but could be getting ready for a breakout upwards soon, powered by strong fundamentals and a bullish sentiment in the overall crypto market. At the time of writing, SOL/USDT is trading at around $158.06.

One of the fastest blockchain networks in the market at present, Solana has garnered considerable attention among dApps and developers, with its adoption rate growing at a rapid pace over the past few months. The increased developer interest has helped drive a rally in SOL Which went on to catch the eye of institutional investors lately, who have been betting big on its potential and pouring in considerable funds into the cryptocurrency which currently ranks seventh in terms of market cap. Since the beginning of 2021, SOL has rallied by over 14,000% making it one of the best performing cryptos in the market so far.

Latest Fundamental Developments That Can Support Solana

On the fundamentals front, Solana-based DeFi protocol Nova Finance successfully closed a $3 million funding round, shortly after winning the blockchain’s very own hackathon. Nova’s programmable asset framework encourages the onboarding of new users into the world of DeFi even if they lack specialized financial management skills. The project is planning its IDO followed by mainnet launch on the Solana blockchain within this quarter, giving the network more power in the DeFi space.

Meanwhile, a popular short-video sharing platform based on the Solana ecosystem – Chingari, recently raised over $19 million in funding. Based out of India, the platform has one of the highest engagement rates and has become immensely popular across users in the market ever since India imposed a ban on TikTok. Its soaring growth has contributed to higher levels of on-chain activity on Solana and supports the value of the SOL token.

Another interesting project on the Solana ecosystem that could garner considerable adoption is Secretum – a decentralized and encrypted messaging application which offers an attractive alternate to popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal. In addition to supporting chats and file transfers, its users can sign up with their crypto wallet addresses and even use the platform to trade P2P fungible and non-fungible digital assets without the use of exchanges.

Solana’s blockchain has been busy on the NFT front as well, with the launch of new collection under Soulless Solomon, which aims to be the CryptoPunks’ equivalent for its network. The project will launch nearly 8,000 digital artworks, bringing together a wide range of artists and blockchain developers and is expected to generate interest from thousands of users looking to add the minted NFTs to their collections.

SOL/USDT Technical Analysis

Popular crypto analyst and trader who operates under the pseudonym ‘Cantering Clark’ selects Solana as the fastest horse among cryptocurrencies, indicating that it is outperforming market leader Bitcoin as well in terms of price action. Meanwhile, another leading crypto influencer Raoul Pal forecasts a strong rally in SOL on the lines of the price action ETH had seen in 2016-17, which could catapult its price past the $800 mark by April 2022.

Taking a look at the H4 price chart, most of the larger moving averages along with the momentum indicator are exhibiting a bullish bias. However, the smaller timeframe MAs and the MACD reveal some selling pressure.

Solana’s price is holding above the pivot point at $155.13 and buyers could smoothly take the price higher until encountering resistance at $172.64. On the other hand, an increase in selling pressure could see SOL test the pivot point.