FTX CEO says institutional interest in Solana is growing

Solana, a competitor crypto network to Ethereum, is experiencing greater interest from institutional players, according to Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that specialized in derivatives and leveraged products.

SOL, the network’s native token, has seen a year-to-date price increase of more than 13,000 percent. Solana bills itself as the world’s fastest blockchain, with an average transaction cost of $0.00025, according to its website.

On Solana’s network, Bankman-Fried is creating the Serum derivatives exchange. He claims that the popularity of Solana has been fueled by interest in nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, and decentralized finance, as well as the advent of the Pyth Network market-data feed.

“There’s been a lot more interest institutionally,” Bankman-Fried added. He went on to say that Solana is “one of the only blockchains that has a compelling long-term road map” that will be eventually able to support industrial uses of crypto.

Anatoly Yakovenko designed the Solana blockchain, which is an enterprise-grade blockchain. Solana Labs, a decentralized finance project developer, raised $314.2 million in June from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research.

Solana has risen to become the world’s sixth largest cryptocurrency, after gaining unprecedented global attention.