The amount of uncertainty with respect to Solana has been escalating. Of late, there have been several claims doing the rounds that most of the development activity on Solana is essentially faked via artificial identities.
Consider this: Saber [a stablecoin exchange built on top of Solana] and Sunny [a DeFi app] reportedly made up an estimated $7.5 billion of Solana’s $10.5 billion TVL at their peak. However, both projects disappeared into thin air eventually.
In fact, the state of development activity metric has been on a downtrend for a while now making more room for fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Outlining whether or not the fake development activity assertions hold any water, one of Santiment’s recent reports noted,
“Looks like they’re spot on. Certainly not a good sign for the once thriving asset in 2021.”
However, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin feels that there’s a silver lining. Now that the “awful and opportunistic money people” have been washed out, Vitalik opined that the chain has a “bright future.” He also stated that he has been told that there is “an earnest smart developer community” in Solana.
Buterin was quick to add a disclaimer that it was “hard” for him to tell from the outside but hoped that the community got its “fair chance” to thrive.
Is There Light At The End Of The Tunnel For Solana?
At the moment, it is hard to believe that. To add to the pessimistic sentiment, institutions have been washing their hands off Solana-based products. For instance, Jihan Wu’s asset management platform, Matrixport recently revealed that it will delist Solana and SOL-U dual currency products. These assets will reportedly exit the platform on December 30, 2022.
Alongside, Deribit, the largest options exchange, announced on Monday that it will stop offering Solana inverse products. After the upcoming December 30, 2022 expiry, the platform will not list new Solana inverse options or futures.
Furthermore, people from the community are not happy. Arthur Hayes, the Co-Founder of crypto exchange BitMEX labeled SOL a “shitcoin” earlier this week. Others from the community also retorted the same narrative and feel that Solana is “dead and going to zero.”
The project’s association with FTX has added more fuel to the fire. Blockchain Investor James Spediacci recently tweeted,
“FTX committing fraud and stealing customer funds to invest in Solana projects was the main reason anything was successful on Solana. Now, all that money is gone and FTX will forever be negatively associated with Solana.”
Parallelly, the trading volume is currently at year-low levels, implying that investors are steering away from this asset. Elaborating on whether or not the asset is worth clinging onto, Santiment noted,
“Although nothing is a guarantee in crypto, probabilities point to SOL being a tough asset to have an argument for hanging on to at this time.”
Also Read: Why Solana is one of 2022’s Biggest Losers