Expanding ecosystem and $1.86B futures open interest back Solana’s $250 target

The price of Solana’s SOL coin is meeting resistance near its all-time high again, but solid fundamentals and the impressive growth of its decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) ecosystem are likely to drive the altcoin above $250 before year-end.

SOL/USDT 1-day chart. Source: TradingView
Institutional investor interest is likely a key factor behind SOL’s impressive 490% gain since August. For example, SOL is the fourth-largest Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund component, which overall is a $1.3 billion over-the-counter tradable market instrument.

DeFi is gaining traction
Solana’s two most prominent decentralized finance projects are decentralized exchanges with built-in yield generation programs, and they hold nearly $2 billion in total locked value each.

Saber is an automated market maker protocol that trades between stable pairs and synthetic assets and provides yields for the platform’s liquidity providers. Meanwhile, Raydium offers a decentralized exchange, yield farming and liquidity pools.

Evidence of institutional investors’ appetite for Solana was the $12-million weekly inflow in mid-October, as reported by CoinShares recently. In the same week, the United States registered branch of exchange FTX announced support for the Solana blockchain, enabling users to trade, deposit and withdraw NFTs that conform to the Metaplex token standard.

SOL futures open interest reached a record-high
This positive newsflow has been reflected on SOL’s derivatives markets, as depicted by the aggregate futures open interest data below:

Source  : cointelegraph.com