Solana (SOL) is on a tear. The seventh-largest digital asset by market cap surged over 13.6% during the past 24 hours, hitting $46 at its peak — a level not seen since August 2022. More impressive: SOL is up nearly 81% in a matter of weeks. News of the testnet launch of Firedancer yesterday further fuelled the price of the Ethereum killer.

Firedancer Is Now Live On Solana Testnet

Central to the improved sentiment around Solana is the rollout of Firedancer on the testnet.

Firedancer is a new open-source validator client that Solana Labs has said is aimed at improving Solana’s scalability, resiliency, and decentralization. 

Firedancer, which is the project of Jump Crypto and was implemented in 

C/C++ software language, has been touted as the crucial fix to Solana’s incessant network outages. Notably, Firedancer seeks to scale Solana to an impressive one million transactions per second (TPS).

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Spotlighting the importance of Firedance to Solana’s roadmap, Solana Foundation Executive Dan Albert posited during his stage appearance at Solana’s Breakpoint 2023 conference on October 31:

“These guys have been hustling hard. Really did a lot of work, working around the clock in the last couple of weeks and I am really excited to announce that right now the first version of Firedancer is live on testnet.”

According to Real Vision and Global Macro Investor (GMI) founder and CEO Raoul Paul, Firedancer is not only a huge milestone for the Solana network but for blockchain technology in general.

“Firedancer is a VERY big deal, not just for Solana but for blockchain technology overall. It is a quantum leap in speed (10x faster than the fastest blockchain today) whilst increasing security and robustness of the Solana Virtual Machine [SVM]. We’re eagerly awaiting its migration to Mainnet in the summer of 2024,” Paul said in a post on the X (formerly Twitter) platform.

SOL Price And FTX Unstaking 

Solana’s resurgence as one of the best-performing crypto assets — with over 300% gains this year alone — has come as a huge surprise to many spectators, disregarding concerns about its future after the implosion of Sam Bankman Fried’s crypto empire, which had close ties to the Solana ecosystem. 

Interest in SOL has ballooned recently, and last week, asset management firm VanEck forecasted a potential eye-popping 10,600% price increase from the current $43.61 price point for it to reach an ambitious $3,211.28 in the coming years.

Yet, in the near term, Solana investors are worried that some selling pressure could soon hit the SOL market. Blockchain data shows that the FTX-Alameda bankruptcy estate has recently shifted $34 million worth of SOL tokens to numerous crypto exchanges, perhaps intending to liquidate. Moreover, an FTX-linked wallet recently unstaked another 1.6 million coins (worth roughly $66 million), indicating that more coins might be on the move.