Solana has surpassed Bitcoin and Ether in 2023

Solana has outperformed Bitcoin and Ether since January. Photo illustration of Fortune

While all eyes are on Bitcoin’s creep toward $30,000 and Ether’s double-digit year-to-date jump, another cryptocurrency has quietly outpaced the gains of both since the beginning of the year.

Solana, or SOL, the original symbol of the Solana blockchain, has shot up 133% since trading at just $10 on January 1st, and continues to shrug off any buzz from being associated with Sam Bankman-Fried. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is up 78% and Ether is up just over 50% over the same period.

While Solana’s market cap fell to $5.3 billion the day after FTX filed for bankruptcy, it has since recovered 72% to $9.1 billion. It was up 3% over 24 hours on Friday afternoon, trading at $22.86. Bitcoin and Ether were both down around 1%, at $29,300 and $1,800, respectively, according to CoinMarketCap.

The number of successful transactions on the Solana blockchain rose to 713 million in March – the most since October – according to data tracker FlipSide. The total number of transactions is still down year-on-year, mainly due to a lingering bear market.

The Solana blockchain, which supports the Solana cryptocurrency, presents itself as a faster and cheaper alternative to the Ethereum blockchain, still the most popular for decentralized apps such as NFT marketplaces and financial applications.

But Solana’s pitch as an “Ethereum killer” has hit some snags, including a string of recent outages and slowdowns. In February, a performance disruption resulted in problems with transactions and prompted validators, who verify transactions on the blockchain, to restart the network to resolve the issue. Solana also faced a setback in the NFT space earlier this year when two of its most popular pools, y00ts and DeGods, left the blockchain.

Austin Federa, chief strategy officer for the Solana Foundation, previously said Fortune he wasn’t worried about the projects leaving.

Just a month after losing these collections, a new project, Crazy boys, brings some excitement back to Solana NFTs. The collection, created by Web3 company Coral – co-founded by Solana developer Armani Ferrante – launched this week and has already become the most traded NFT with the highest sales volume in the past seven days, according to Crypto Slam.

Mad Lads struck out

Compared to $11.4 million for Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, Mad Lads generated $17 million in sales over the past seven days, according to Crypto Slam. The Mad Lads trading frenzy also helped the Solana blockchain stay just above Polygon in the number of transactions this past week, according to Crypto Slam, even as Starbucks and other big companies flocked to the latter blockchain.

Mad Lads is one of the first of a new type of non-fungible tokens called executable NFTs, or xNFTs. While most NFTs are linked to centralized websites to provide the experiences they promise, xNFTs allow embedded functionality. For example, it could allow a game developer to create an entire game like limited edition xNFTs. For Mad Lads, the images act as a user chat room rendered entirely within NFT, thanks to Coral’s new crypto wallet, Backpack, Federa wrote in a blog post.

Federa said the launch of Mad Lads is proof that Solana’s more flexible NFT technology is a boon for entrepreneurs and creators.

“NFTs at Solana have always been a little different than other chains,” Federa shared Fortune. “It’s this kind of relentless innovation and a drive to experiment.”