The crash of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and its Alameda Research trading platform had the biggest impact on the Solana altcoin. During the entire FTX episode, Solana's native cryptocurrency, SOL, lost more than 70% of its value. As of press time, SOL is down 9,15%, with a price tag of $11,64 and a market cap of $4,2 billion.
Some of the key projects that led to Solana's exposure to the FTX crash were Project Serum and Sollet's packaged assets. Messari, the leading provider of cryptocurrency intelligence products, offered some food for thought on recent developments.
After the FTX crash, Solana faced a major setback in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. The total value locked by all DeFi protocols on the Solana blockchain network has dropped by 30%.
Project Serum, the central order ledger that connects the backend of nearly every non-AMM piece of Solana's DeFi ecosystem, has led to a major FUD around Solana. At FTX, an unknown entity was in possession of the Project Serum upgrade keys. This sparked panic within the SOL community.
However, the developers quickly hardforked the changes in Project Serum, and the vulnerability of the hack was reduced. Tokens packaged with Solana also proved to be another problem. Thus, soBTC, which was supposed to be pegged to Bitcoin, has been unpegged in recent days.
FTX and Alameda had issued Sollet-wrapped assets. However, the news of FTX's collapse also had a negative impact on the price of SOL. Other Sollet-based assets, such as soETH, have also faced similar problems.
Aptos can replace Solana
Despite the recent cryptocurrency market crash, one project that is doing relatively well is Aptos (APT). Aptos is another Layer 1 blockchain platform and a Solana competitor that launched just three weeks ago.
Aptos was launched by executives working on Facebook's stablecoin project, Diem. Aptos claims to have greater potential for development and partnerships with similar companies. Interestingly, within weeks of launching, Aptos partnered with Google Cloud.
Also, some of the very popular funds they have invested in Aptos include Binance Labs, Multicoin Capital, and Circle. But some notorious names like Jump Crypto and FTX Ventures also made the list.
Aptos is a relatively young blockchain. While APT's price gained rapidly upon launch, it came under broader selling pressure from the market. Currently, the APT token is trading at around $4, with a market value of $500 million. However, the extremely limited supply of 13% of existing APTs could work in its favor.
The one bright spot for Solana is that the underlying price of the blue-chip NFT has rallied significantly over the past week. This shows that the cryptocurrency community still has a good interest in Solana NFTs.
