Bitcoin and Ethereum are making great strides, while Solana is mired in an exchange rate quagmire. Can SOL break through 200 dollars?

Written by: White55, Mars Finance

As global inflation pressures intensify and the volatility of the US dollar credit fluctuates, Bitcoin's safe-haven attributes as "digital gold" have been reactivated, with its price breaking through the $120,000 mark on July 14. Ethereum surpassed $3,000, becoming a hard currency that institutions view as "both practical and growth-oriented."

However, at the same time, the SOL/ETH exchange rate has reached a new low in 2025: when Ethereum breaks through strongly, Solana's weakness becomes particularly glaring.

The SOL/ETH exchange rate has fallen to its lowest point of the year, and even though the tokenization scale of RWA (real world assets) has increased by 140% year-on-year to $418 million, it has not managed to restore market confidence.

As Bitcoin expands its territory as a "compliant asset" and Ethereum continues to lead with "technological iterations", Solana's breakout battle is destined to be a brutal game of capital will, technological faith, and market sentiment. Meanwhile, the alarm for a new low in the exchange rate has already sounded...

1. RWA Track Explodes: Solana's Technical Advantages Translated into Market Share

High throughput + low cost: The engine for RWA growth

Solana has become one of the preferred platforms for tokenizing real-world assets (RWA) with a processing capability of over 50,000 transactions per second (TPS) and nearly zero transaction costs (approximately $0.00025). By 2025, its RWA custody scale skyrocketed to $418 million, with an annual growth rate of 140.6%, far exceeding the industry average growth rate of 62.4%. Its market share surged to fourth place in blockchain (3.9%), only behind Ethereum (58.4%), ZKsync Era (17.2%), and Aptos (4%).

As of July 7, RWA tokenization projects on Solana. Source: Messari

The core driving force behind this growth rate lies in its technical architecture - combining Delegated Proof of Stake (dPoS) and Proof of History (PoH) algorithms, it can process massive transactions in parallel, providing infrastructure support for institutional-level asset tokenization.

Head Protocol Drives Ecological Expansion

The two major RWA protocols on Solana—Ondo (USD Yield Fund) and ONe (Institutional Fund)—manage $277 million in assets, accounting for 66% of the total RWA scale on the network. The cross-chain trading volume generated by these protocols (such as Ondo's 24-hour trading volume of $2.7 million) continues to feed back into the Solana ecosystem, driving on-chain revenue growth. In the past 30 days, Solana has generated $3.9 million in revenue from the RWA sector, which, although only 24.5% of Ethereum's ($15.9 million), has a growth rate (14.6%) far exceeding that of Ethereum (3.6%).

This "protocol-blockchain" symbiotic relationship is becoming a differentiated weapon for Solana in its competition for the RWA market.

2. Price Dilemma and Breakthrough Opportunities: Technological Upgrades and ETF Expectations

Behind the new low of the SOL/ETH exchange rate

Despite the rapid growth of RWA, SOL has recently performed poorly, and the SOL/ETH exchange rate has hit a new low for 2025. This contradiction stems from threefold pressure:

Fund Diversion: After the approval of the Bitcoin ETF, institutional funds flow into BTC, while Ethereum's Pectra upgrade (which lowers the staking threshold and improves validation efficiency) attracts liquidity;

Meme craze cools down: Solana previously relied on Meme trading platforms like Pump.fun to drive traffic, but speculative funds are highly volatile and difficult to sustain continuous increases;

Competitive Squeeze: Emerging public chains like Aptos are growing faster in the RWA field (30-day growth of 52.7%), diverting some incremental funds.

However, the on-chain fundamentals of Solana remain unshaken:

TVL grows against the trend: Total locked value increased from 6 billion USD in April to 9.2 billion USD, a growth of 53%;

Institutional buying: DeFi Development Corp invested $2.72 million to purchase 17,760 SOL, and the daily trading volume of the staking ETF exceeded $67 million.

Technical Upgrade: Fire Dancer's Million TPS Vision

The Fire Dancer upgrade deployed in early 2025 is a key catalyst for Solana. This optimization increases the network throughput to 1 million transactions per second and introduces automatic validator switching, completely resolving historical downtime issues.

If stability standards are met, institutions' confidence in high-frequency scenarios such as on-chain stock issuance will be greatly enhanced—currently, Solana has proposed a "Nasdaq-like" competitive model that allows companies to issue tokenized stocks on-chain and compete with traditional exchanges for listed company resources. If this strategy is successful, Solana will leap from a "high-performance public chain" to a "global financial infrastructure."

The "nuclear-level benefit" of the SOL ETF approval in the second half of the year.

Market expectations for the approval of the Solana spot ETF continue to heat up, with Polymarket predicting a 42% probability that the SOL price will reach $180 by August 1.

Referring to the price increase after the Bitcoin ETF approval, analysts believe that SOL may soar by 40%-60% in the short term, directly challenging the $200 mark.

The more far-reaching impact is that ETFs will open up the funding channels for traditional institutions, pushing Solana's market value towards VanEck's predicted target of $100 billion (corresponding to SOL at $520).

3. The Road to 200 Dollars: The Game of Technical Analysis and Market Sentiment

Key resistance levels and fractal signals

Cup and Handle Breakout: The weekly chart shows that Solana has formed a "Cup and Handle" pattern, with short-term resistance at 184 dollars. After breaking through, the target points to 218 dollars.

Fractal Reproduction: The current price structure resembles the pattern before the surge in September 2024. If history repeats itself, it is expected to rise above 200 USD in July.

Technical indicators further strengthen bullish logic: Supertrend has shifted from bearish to bullish since February, and the 50-day moving average is about to cross above the 200-day moving average, forming a "golden cross" for the first time since 2022.

The derivatives market harbors a bullish consensus.

The current total open interest for SOL contracts across the network exceeds $7.8 billion, about to set a new historical high, while the previous price of SOL was $250, making it extremely undervalued in comparison. The weighted financing rate over the past 30 days has turned from negative to positive.

This leveraged funding bet resonates with institutional spot increases, reflecting the market's strong expectations for a breakout.

V. Conclusion: July could be Solana's "leap of life or death"

The battle for Solana's $200 depends on three key factors:

Can the RWA ecosystem maintain a growth rate of 140%+ and attract continuous inflow of traditional financial assets?

The effectiveness of the Fire Dancer upgrade and the incremental funds brought by the approval of the ETF in July;

The degree of digestion of the FTX unlock wave is related to the recovery of market sentiment.

Technical signals: If it stands firm at the support level of $172 and breaks through the Fibonacci resistance at $183, it is expected to reach $200-208 in July.

Long-term vision: If the three major conditions are met, institutions predict that SOL may challenge $262 by the end of the year (Matrixport) and look towards $500-700 in a bull market (VanEck).

In this battle of public chains, Solana wields technology as a spear and ecology as a shield, while July will be a critical battleground to test whether it can transform from an "Ethereum challenger" to a "new king."