Solana stands out as one of the top performers of 2021 in the crypto market. Let’s take a look back at some of the smart contract platform’s biggest stories of the year. Covered: Solana Receives SBF Approval Solana NFTs Grayscale Adds Solana Phantom Wallet To Add Mobile Support Solana Lands on Brave Browser comparison of […] The post Top Five Solana Stories Of 2021 appeared first on CryptosRus.

Top Five Solana Stories Of 2021

Solana stands out as one of the top performers of 2021 in the crypto market. Let’s take a look back at some of the smart contract platform’s biggest stories of the year.

Covered:

  • Solana Receives SBF Approval
  • Solana NFTs
  • Grayscale Adds Solana
  • Phantom Wallet To Add Mobile Support
  • Solana Lands on Brave Browser

After recovering from the market-wide summer bear cycle, Solana (SOL) was one of the quickest runners out of the gate and brought returns alongside Terra (LUNA) and Avalanche (AVAX) that were orders of magnitude higher gains than Bitcoin or Ethereum.

What were some of the biggest stories this year that highlight the insane growth of Solana in 2021?

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5. Solana Receives SBF Approval

To start off, one of my favorite stories of this year was one of the first moments that Solana really broke out into the mainstream crypto community. Shortly after Solana broke out from its local lows of around $1.29, crypto exchange FTX chief executive officer (CEO) Sam Bankman-Fried called out crypto trader CoinMamba after Mamba tried to bet against Sam that SOL was overvalued above $3.

Taking a look at the price action that followed, it’s pretty safe to say that Sam won the bet, along with any crypto traders who took the trade.

4. Grayscale Adds Solana Trust

Next up, I think the next big story for Solana this year was the stamp of approval it got from the major crypto asset management giant Grayscale in November. After being added to the firm’s Digital Large Cap Fund alongside Uniswap (UNI) back in October, Grayscale quickly learned that Solana would need its own dedicated trust fund.

While it may not mean much for the average crypto holder, the approval from Grayscale gives Solana the validation it needs to see more adoption from larger players, placing it amongst the ranks of “safer” cryptocurrency investments in the institutional eye.

3. Solana NFTs

One of the biggest catalysts in the growth of the Solana network can be attributed to its thriving non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem. Apart from Ethereum, Solana NFTs are among the most highly sought-after digital collectibles due to the popularity of the chain. Despite the launch of NFTs on the blockchain back in March of 2020, Solana’s real move into NFTs came this August with the release of the Degenerate Ape Academy NFT collection. 

Degenerate Apes was a smash-hit success, selling out all 10,000 pieces of the collection in just under 10 minutes after launch. 

Just a few weeks later, FTX launched its own Solana-based NFT marketplace, driving further demand to the SOL ecosystem.

Solana NFTs have since lost a bit of traction alongside the rest of the NFT market, but upcoming NFT plans from major social media tanks like Instagram could reignite the NFT bull run, sending Solana even higher.

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2. Phantom Wallet To Add Mobile Support

I think another big story on the list for Solana is the news that Phantom wallet, the digital wallet built for Solana, is set to launch on mobile in 2022. The mobile integration will help make Solana and decentralized finance (DeFi) more accessible than ever before. Plenty of crypto natives have already migrated to Solana to avoid the high gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain and Phantom has hosted the bulk of Solana users.

At the end of September, Phantom shared that the wallet hit just over half a million weekly active users.

Just over a month later, however, as reported by Decrypt, Phantom wallet has already touted over 1.2 million weekly active users on its web platform as of November, which tells us that Phantom is growing exponentially. 

The addition of a mobile interface will not only give Solana users a more secure, easy access to their crypto, it will also open the floodgates for millions around the world to access Solana DeFi on their phones without the need for a full computer.

1. Solana Lands On Brave Browser

Finally, I think one of the biggest stories for Solana this year was actually its partnership with Brave Browser last month.

The announcement specifies that the partnership will bring the “best-in-class” features for both mobile and desktop users, making Solana more accessible than ever before to Brave’s 42 million monthly users.

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Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave, is expecting Solana to help onboard another billion users to the decentralized web.

“With more and more users and creators requiring tools for fast and affordable access to the decentralized web, this integration will seamlessly pave the way for the next billion crypto users to harness applications and tokens.”

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That’s it for Solana 2021. Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

The post Top Five Solana Stories Of 2021 appeared first on CryptosRus.