What Would It Take for Solana to Hit $295 Again?
Solana clawed back 21% in a single week, but the conditions that once sent it to its all-time high have largely collapsed. Before betting on a full recovery, investors need to understand exactly what has to go right and how…
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Solana (CRYPTO:SOL) faces a hefty climb of about 152% to return to its all-time high of $295, reached on January 19, 2025. Currently, Solana’s price stands at $117 after a 21% weekly increase, but it remains down 44% over the past year.
Achieving this type of growth requires either the same demand that powered the first peak or new drivers to take its place. Additionally, Solana needs to overcome several lower price levels along the way.
Memecoin Fees Built Solana’s $295 Peak, and More Supply Raises the Bar Now
Solana hit $295 during a surge of interest in memecoins, particularly after Trump launched the TRUMP memecoin on January 17, 2025. This spike in trading activity pushed Solana’s daily fees to a record high of around $33 million on January 19, the same day SOL reached its peak price. That month, apps on the Solana network generated about $806 million in revenue.
Today, Solana collects only about $1 million in fees daily—roughly 3% of its record peak. The trading that drove Solana’s earlier success has significantly diminished, and rival networks, including Ethereum’s layer-2 solutions, have entered the same space, further intensifying competition.
Another hurdle for Solana is the ongoing supply increase. Solana continually issues new SOL tokens each year to reward validators who maintain the network, resulting in about 587 million SOL currently in circulation. If the price reaches $295 again, that supply would need to be valued at approximately $173 billion, surpassing the roughly $140 billion valuation Solana achieved at its peak in January 2025. Therefore, regaining this price requires not only demand but also a higher overall valuation than before.
Fund Money and Tokenized Stocks Are Solana’s Two New Buyers
The first potential source of fresh demand is institutional fund money. U.S. spot Solana funds, which started on October 28, 2025, held around $1.42 billion in assets as of September 17, covering about 10.6 million SOL. These funds have seen continuous inflows for 12 straight weeks. While fund buying is helpful because it’s more about allocation than price, $1.42 billion is still minimal compared to the $173 billion target.
The second source of new demand is tokenized stocks—shares of publicly listed companies represented as tokens, trading 24/7. Solana supports about $465 million of these assets, the highest among all blockchains, and the SEC granted trading venues a five-year exemption on September 17. Each transaction on Solana incurs a fee, so this sector could help offset lost revenue from the decline in memecoin trading.
However, both of these new demand sources still have a long way to go. They need to significantly expand to replace the much larger fee income generated during the memecoin boom.
Solana Needs a Bitcoin Rally and a Break Above $150 First
Solana has outperformed major cryptocurrencies recently, rising 20% compared to Bitcoin’s (CRYPTO:BTC) 10% and Ethereum’s (CRYPTO:ETH) 11% over the past month. However, over the past year, the trend reverses: SOL is down 44%, while Bitcoin has dropped only 23% and Ethereum 34%. Solana tends to fluctuate more wildly than these larger currencies in both upward and downward movements, so a broad crypto market rally is essential, rather than relying solely on its own developments.
To regain momentum, SOL must first surpass key price levels, starting with $124, roughly 6% above its current price and matching its close on December 31, 2025. The next target is the $149 to $150 range, where it faced resistance in January 2026, approximately 28% above. The upcoming Alpenglow upgrade, set to launch on September 28, aims to reduce transaction settlement times to about 150 milliseconds, giving investors a potential reason to push through these resistance levels.
Can Solana Reach Its All-Time High Again?
Right now, it seems unlikely Solana will hit $295 again by the end of 2027, and the odds are even lower within the next 12 months. That previous peak was driven largely by memecoin trading, whose fees have now plummeted by about 97%. The new demand sources, fund investments and tokenized stocks, are showing growth but are still considerably smaller than the previous memecoin trading levels.
Betting on Solana’s comeback to its all-time high means hoping for a 152% increase that relies on rising fees, new fund inflows, and a broader market rally, all occurring simultaneously. Solana’s first step is a weekly close above $124. If SOL maintains that level by the end of Q1 2027 and continues to see positive fund inflows, the prospects could improve. Conversely, a failure to maintain this level could keep the record out of reach for the foreseeable future.
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Sam Daodu is a crypto analyst and the editor of 24/7 Wall St.'s Crypto Desk, where he covers Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, Solana and the altcoins investors search for most. His work focuses on price levels, spot ETF flows, on-chain data and the regulatory decisions that move crypto markets, written so a first-time buyer and a seasoned trader can both use it.
Sam has written about crypto professionally since 2019 and has published more than 2,000 articles. Before joining 24/7 Wall St., he wrote for crypto media outlets and Web3 companies and ghostwrote for crypto founders and token launches. His analysis is syndicated on Yahoo Finance, MSN and AOL and has been cited by other crypto news sites. He also founded MacLabs Marketing, a content and personal branding agency for crypto founders and executives.
When he isn't reading charts, Sam is usually at the gym or watching One Piece, a series he maintains has better tokenomics than most altcoins.
