The Solana price has dropped by 6.5% today, falling to $135 as the crypto market as a whole loses 3% in 24 hours.
SOL is now down by 11% in a week and is basically flat in the last 30 days, with yesterday also witnessing a speech in which NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden described Solana as a “centralized” network that nobody uses “except for meme coins and scams.”
Such criticisms may chime with what supporters of other networks have said about Solana in the past, but with SOL still up by an impressive 460% in a year the altcoin still has lots of momentum.
And while the cryptocurrency market still needs time to recover from recent blows, SOL remains in a good position to benefit more than most from renewed bullishness.
Solana Price Analysis: Snowden Criticizes ‘Centralized Chain’ – What’s Next for SOL?
Speaking via video link at Singapore’s Token 2049 conference, Snowden criticized Solana and its team for “taking good ideas” and asking what would happen if they “centralized everything.”
While Snowden conceded that this approach would and has made Solana faster and cheaper than many of its rivals, he also argued that “nobody” is using the blockchain except scammers and meme token issuers.
And the reason for this, in his view, is that Solana’s centralization makes it risky for anyone doing anything important to put their platform or project on Solana, since the latter is “a system that has levers that people can [use to] simply just take from you.”
Members of the Solana community have responded quickly and firmly to these claims, yet Snowden’s status may mean that neutrals pay more attention to his views than to any rebuttals.
Either way, they come at a bad time for Solana and the rest of the market, which has suffered from a one-two punch of escalation in the Middle East and then the SEC lodging an appeal in its Ripple case.
This is reflected in the Solana price and the coin’s chart, which shows SOL in a very weak and oversold position.
Source: TradingViewHowever, the flipside of this weakness is that SOL should rebound soon, with its relative strength index (purple) having been below or close to 30 for a couple of days now.
Such low levels can’t continue indefinitely, with Solana’s discounted price likely to entice buyers soon enough.
This hope finds support in SOL’s elevated trading volume, which stands at $3.8 billion today.
Based on this demand, the Solana price could return to $150 by the end of the month.
New Altcoins Can Outperform Major Tokens
Because Solana has entered a murky period, many traders may turn to newer alternatives with the potential to outperform the market.
Picking such alternatives is often difficult, but one method is to look for the biggest presale tokens, which often list after having gained strong momentum.
And the presale coin with probably the most momentum right now is layer-two project Pepe Unchained (PEPU), which has raised over $17 million.
Pepe Unchained is exciting because of its fundamentals, with the project launching an L2 network for Ethereum that will offer instant transactions and very low fees.
Its long-term goal is to become an ecosystem for meme tokens, meaning it’s shaping up to become a direct rival to Solana.
One exciting detail is that, because of its scalability, PEPU will provide double the staking rewards it would have had as a layer-one token.
This should encourage greater ownership of PEPU, which will also be necessary to pay for transaction fees.
The token will have max supply of 8 billion PEPU, with its protocol allocating 30% to staking and 20% to its presale.
Read More: Pepe Unchained Price Prediction
It’s also worth mentioning that its official X account now reaches more than 26,000 followers, a sign of its growing community.
Investors can join PEPU’s sale at the coin’s official website, where it’s selling at $0.00991 per token.
This price will rise tomorrow, so interested traders should act quickly, especially if the token ends up surging when it lists.
Buy PEPU Now
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