Solana’s (SOL), the top cryptocurrency, reached its highest level in April this Thursday. This was due to multiple Solana-based ETFs launched in Canada that have staking capability, and upgrades in infrastructure at Coinbase.
Solana currently trades for $136. According to CoinGecko’s data, this is the first time that Solana reached that price since March 28, 2017. SOL has gained 6% today, surpassing gains made by Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP as well as other coins in the top 10.
Solana, one of top 100 coins, has seen a gain of nearly 23 percent in just the last seven days.
The recent surge comes amid Wednesday's launch of Canada's first spot Solana ETFs, from issuers including 3iQ, Evolve, CI, and Purpose. These exchange-traded fund feature a staking function, which provides investors with a yield by issuing companies staking SOL in support of the Solana Blockchain.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to approve Spot Solana products in the United States. However, firms such as VanEck 21Shares and Bitwise filed an application to launch these products.
Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs were both approved in the U.S. in 2024, and alongside Solana, issuers have filed to launch a potentially wide range of additional spot crypto funds in the States, including those tied to XRP, Dogecoin, and even President Donald Trump's official Solana-based meme coin.
Solana's leg up to a recent high Thursday also came following an announcement from crypto exchange Coinbase that it had upgraded its infrastructure, enabling faster and more reliable transactions for the asset.
Per the X post, Coinbase 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."
Scaling our @Solana platform has taken a lot of work to become faster, stronger, and more scalable.
Upgraded our system to:
→ Process transactions asynchronously, leading to a 5x improvement in block processing throughput.
→ Leverage bare metal machines for 4x… pic.twitter.com/WFINzCutNK— Coinbase Platform (@CoinbasePltfrm) April 17, 2025
Coinbase has previously faced criticism over Solana transaction delays via its exchange, which came to a head in January around the launch of Trump's meme coin.
"It’s clear we need to step up our game on Solana," he wrote on X in January, "scale our infrastructure, and provide native support for common use cases like DEX/meme coin trading."
