Solana slips 15% on congestion news, lost 40% in a week

Solana’s native cryptocurrency (SOL/USD) has lost another 15% today, bringing its weekly losses to almost 40% and slipping under $90. The Solana blockchain continues to face major network congestion issues. The token has been in freefall amid a market slump, losing nearly 60% since reaching an all-time high in November 2021, CoinGape wrote.

48 hours of instability

Over the past two days, the Solana network has been unstable, disappointing traders and investors alike. On January 22, engineers published the following notice on the Solana website:

Systems fully operational, but for how long?

On Monday, January 24, the status shows that Solana network is fully operational again. However, it seems the damage has been done. Its frequent outages are leading some traders to lose trust in the Solana ecosystem as a whole.

Other Ethereum (ETH/USD) Layer-1 competitors like Fantom (FTM/USD) and BSC have been gathering momentum as a result. Founder of Boolean Fund and crypto investor Mark Jeffery wrote:

Solana market share declining

Against the backdrop of frequent outages, people have started to doubt that Solana is the real Ethereum killer. Its share of DeFi TVL is declining as DeFi traders opt for affordable alternatives like Avalanche (AVAX/USD), Fantom, and Terra (LUNA/USD). After Ethereum, Fantom is the largest network in terms of DeFi TVL.

Solana has also slipped to eighth position with a fully diluted market cap of less than $45 billion according to current CoinMarketCap data. They are trying to reverse losses and planning additional network fixes in the near future. The engineering team wrote: