Solana (SOL) reached its highest April price on Thursday, trading at nearly $136 according to CoinGecko data, marking the first time it has hit this level since March 28. The cryptocurrency outperformed other major coins with a 6% daily gain, surpassing increases from Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and other top-10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Over the past week, SOL has surged nearly 23%, making it one of the top performers among the top 100 cryptocurrencies.
The price increase coincides with Wednesday’s debut of Canada’s first spot Solana ETFs, which feature staking capabilities. Issuers including 3iQ, Evolve, CI, and Purpose launched these exchange-traded funds that provide investors with yield generated by staking SOL to support the Solana Blockchain network.
ETF Developments and Regulatory Landscape
While Canada has approved Solana ETFs, the United States has yet to greenlight similar investment products. Several firms including VanEck, 21Shares, and Bitwise have submitted applications to the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking approval for spot Solana ETFs.
The U.S. has already approved spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in 2024, and companies have filed to launch additional crypto funds tied to XRP, Dogecoin, and even President Donald Trump‘s official Solana-based meme coin.
Coinbase Infrastructure Improvements
Solana’s recent price surge also followed an announcement from cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase about significant infrastructure upgrades. The exchange revealed on X (formerly Twitter) that it had enhanced its systems to enable faster and more reliable Solana transactions.
According to Coinbase’s post, the upgrades will “process transactions asynchronously, leading to a 5x improvement in block processing throughput,” “leverage bare metal machines for 4x improved RPC performance,” and “be more resilient via improved failover, liquidity optimizations, and better operational controls.”
These improvements address previous criticisms of Coinbase’s handling of Solana transactions, which became particularly apparent in January during the launch of Trump’s meme coin. At that time, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong acknowledged on X, “It’s clear we need to step up our game on Solana, scale our infrastructure, and provide native support for common use cases like DEX/meme coin trading.”
Source: Bitnewsbot.com / Digpu NewsTex