Investment Disclaimer:

• I am not a registered investment, legal, or tax adviser or a broker/dealer, and all opinions expressed by me are from my research for educational purposes only.
• Past performance presented here is not an indicator of future performance.
• This post expresses my own opinion about the cryptocurrency mentioned herein and is not an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell the cryptocurrency mentioned in this post.
• I do hold a long position in SOL as a token holder.

0. What is Solana?

Solana is a Layer 1 blockchain which runs on proof-of-history consensus mechanism. It has been reported as the fastest blockchain with very low gas fees. It offers its users a block time of approximately 400 milliseconds, which is way more faster than other layer 1 smart contract blockchains like Ethereum which has a block time of about 15 seconds and Binance Smart Chain which comes with a block time of around 3 seconds. In addition, it has the capability to process as many as 50,000 transactions per second (tps), and its average cost per transaction is $0.00025.

Despite its promises, please note that Solana is still under a Beta stage at the moment and there were incidents of network outrage and  DDoS attack .

1A. Solana Project Updates

1. Welcome to the Solana Riptide Hackathon (03 FEB 2022)

The fifth Solana hackathon will run Feb. 2 - Mar. 17th, 2022. Riptide will focus on encouraging new projects in the payments, DeFi, web3, gaming, and DAO space. Builders can expect talks, workshops, resources, and the encouragement of the greater Solana community.

2. Solana Pay ushers in new payments era (01 FEB 2022)

Solana Pay, a new payments protocol, ushers in a new era of payments and commerce. The protocol allows the consumer to send digital dollar currencies, such as USDC, from their wallet directly into the merchant’s account. This embeds loyalty, offers and rewards in the same messaging scheme and become true building blocks for the future of commerce.

3. Introducing the Solana Hacker House Inaugural World Tour (19 JAN 2022)

The Solana Hacker House World Tour is a series of six week-long hacker houses around the globe. Each Hacker House will give builders a place to work, find collaborators, and learn from some of the greats in the Solana ecosystem. Each house has limited capacity, so submit your application early!

1B. Top 2 Good News for SOL HODLERS !!!

• Solana Proves Formidable With Rapid Growth In Daily Active Addresses, Neck and Neck With Polygon and Ether
  Statistic as of 2022-02-14 08:55 AM EDT: 33 positive votes, 3 negative votes
  
  The number of daily active users on Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana are becoming almost identical with them converging at the level of approximately 300,000 daily users as measured by the number of active addresses.
  
  (Extracted from Crypto Panic)
  
  
• Polkadot, Cardano, Solana Forerun Bitcoin, Ethereum As Crypto Assets With Least Carbon Footprints
  Statistic as of 2022-02-14 08:55 AM EDT: 25 positive votes, 0 negative vote
  
  With the debate on the energy consumption of various crypto blockchains raging on, a new report now shows how various top blockchain networks relate in terms of power consumption.
  
  (Extracted from Crypto Panic)

1C. Top Bad News for SOL HODLERS !!!

• Solana Suffers Dip Following $322M Wormhole Hack
  Statistic as of 2022-02-14 08:56 AM EDT: 6 positive votes, 30 negative votes
  
  (Extracted from Crypto Panic)

2. How Solana Performs Relative to Other Cryptos ?

Performance of All Cryptos Under Quantdoge's Watchlist since 2021 (Sorted by % Return)

SOL has undergone 6,213.5% return from USD 1.5158 to USD 95.7 since 01 Jan 2021. SOL is the 5th best performing crypto assets among others here.

3. How Resilience Solana Is Towards Bitcoin Crash Relative to Other Cryptos ?

Historically, all altcoins are somewhat dependent on Bitcoin price movement and it’s often the case where if Bitcoin falls, most altcoins would follow.

Top 3 Cryptos That Are Most Resilient To Bitcoin Crash During Each of BTC 4 Largest Crashes in 2021

SOL has proven resilience against BTC crash in 0 out of the 4 instances.

During the last 4 BTC market crashes,

When BTC dropped by -13.47 %, SOL returned -36.37 % at 20 May 2021,
When BTC dropped by -13.13 %, SOL returned -19.58 % at 22 January 2021,
When BTC dropped by -12.16 %, SOL returned -2.47 % at 13 May 2021,
When BTC dropped by -11.39 %, SOL returned -24.63 % at 22 June 2021

4. Technical Analysis on Solana

4.1. Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP)

VWAP is a technical indicator used by a trader to gauge the overall trend of an asset price movement. VWAP line (orange line) represents the volume-weighted average price (average price here is defined as the average of high, low and close prices) while close price line (blue line) represents the price when SOL is closed at the end of every single day. 

Whenever blue line (close price) is above orange line (VWAP), it indicates that the asset is gaining momentum and being traded higher than its average price level. This would represent a 'buy' opportunity for short-term momentum trader whom task is to trade following the trend while a longer term mean-revision trader might take it as a 'sell' opportunity, anticipating that the price of SOL (blue line) to fall to its average level (orange line).

Whenever blue line (close price) is below orange line (VWAP), it indicates that the asset is losing momentum and being traded lower than its average price level. This would represent a 'sell' opportunity for short-term momentum trader whom task is to trade following the trend while a longer term mean-revision trader might take it as a 'buy' opportunity, anticipating that the price of SOL (blue line) to rise to its average level (orange line).

As of 13 Feb 2022, VWAP is suggesting that SOL is losing momentum and is now trading below its week-long and month-long volume-weighted averages.

4.2. Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD)


MACD is often used by trader as a momentum indicator. There are 2 lines that form the above charts, namely MACD (12, 26) lines and Signal(9) line, while the histogram is calculated by subtracting Signal (9) from MACD (12,26). Histogram would fall to the negative territory whenever MACD (12, 26) is trending at a lower level than Signal (9) and rise to the positive territory whenever MACD (12,26) is trending at a higher level than Signal (9).

MACD (12, 26) is computed by subtracting the 26-day exponential moving average (EMA) of SOL closing price from its 12-day EMA. 
Signal (9) on the other hand is calculated as the 9-day EMA of MACD (12,26). 

As MACD (12, 26) goes higher away from Signal (9), it signifies that SOL is gaining momentum and whenever it goes trends at a lower level than Signal (9),it signifies that SOL is losing momentum. 

As of 13 Feb 2022, MACD is suggesting that SOL is losing momentum as it trends down.

4.3. Bollinger Band

Bollinger band is often being used by mean-reversion trader as a gauge to assess how undervalued or overvalued an asset is. Its chart made up of 4 lines, namely:

- SMA (20) (blue line), which is the 20-day simple moving average price of SOL
- Upper Band (orange line), which is computed by adding 2 standard deviations of SOL on SMA (20)
- Lower Band (red line) , which is computed by subtracting 2 standard deviations of SOL from SMA (20)
- Close (green line), which is the daily closing price of SOL

Whenever close line (green) touches the lower band (red), it indicates that SOL is corrected too much and is being traded at an undervalued level, representing a 'buy' opportunity. On the other hand, whenever close line (green) touches the upper band (orange), it indicates that SOL is gaining too much momentum and is being traded at an overvalued level, thus indicating a 'sell' opportunity. 

As of 13 Feb 2022, Bollinger Band is suggesting that SOL is now trading near its MACD lower band, which often time being treated as an oversold/ undervalued threshold.

4.4. Relative Strength Index (RSI)

Just like Bollinger Band, Relative Strength Index is often being used by mean-reversion trader as a gauge to assess how undervalued or overvalued an asset is. There are 2 psychological levels, i.e. 30 and 70 in RSI. Whenever the RSI reaches 30, it indicates that SOL is corrected too much and is being traded at an undervalued level, representing a 'buy' opportunity. On the other hand, whenever RSI reaches 70, it indicates that SOL is gaining too much momentum and is being traded at an overvalued level, thus indicating a 'sell' opportunity. 

As of 13 Feb 2022, RSI is suggesting that SOL is relatively oversold (undervalued) across all moving average windows (14D, 28D, 32D and 46D). 

4.5. Price and Volume Analysis



There are more daily active trading volumes during the recent time where SOL is trading around the range of USD 90 to USD 110, as compared to the days before 16 Jan 2022 when SOL was trading above USD 140. 

Based on the technical analysis presented above, quantdoge is bullish on SOL, but I could be wrong, hence please make your careful due diligence before making any financial decision.

5. Solana Risk Profile

Based on the 100-day 95% historical Value-at-Risk (VaR) profile of Solana defined above, SOL seems to trade at a similar risk level on 13 Feb 2022 as compared to 10 days before on 03 Feb 2022, with its biggest pullback being seen at -17.3% on a single day during the last 100 days. However, I could be wrong, hence please make your careful due diligence before making any financial decision.

Based on the probability distribution chart of SOL's daily return however, the chart has shifted left as compared to 10 days ago, where there is now a slightly higher chance for SOL to lose more than 10% and a relatively lower probability of making 10% or more. This would mean that SOL is now slightly riskier towards the downside. 

6. SOL Community Analytics

Number of SOL Followers In The Last 30 Days

In the last 30 days alone, Solana followers have remained stagnant on Twitter and grown 8.07 % from 119,626 to 129,284 on Reddit.

Daily increment of Solana Twitter followers peaked on 18 Jan 2022 and its daily increment of Reddit followers peaked on 23 Jan 2022.

On average, Solana managed to attract 2,232 new Twitter users and 333 new Reddit subscribers every day for the past 30 days.

7. Google Trends Analytics


"solana" reached its peak in Google Search on 2021-09-05 00:00:00 with a Google Score of 100
Over the last quarter, "solana" Google Score has decreased 8.46 % from 50.25 to 46.0
Over the last 6 months, "solana" Google Score has decreased 28.12 % from 64.0 to 46.0

8. Developer Activity Analytics

Fork

Fork refers to the amount of time where the Github repo of current cryptocurrency is being copied. Higher fork number could mean that this cryptocurrency project is getting more interest in the developers community who likes to explore more on the deep technical of this project.

Solana forks increased 448.98% from 294 to 1,614 in the past year.

Star

Star refers to the number of developers who bookmark the Github repo of current cryptocurrency. Higher star number could mean that this cryptocurrency project is getting more general interest in the developers community.

Solana stars increased 495.28% from 1,230 to 7,322 in the past year.

Pull Request

Pull request contributor refers to developer who has made a successful improvements/ modifications on the Github repo of this current cryptocurrency project. Higher number of pull request contributors could mean that there is a high number of commitment given by developers to this cryptocurrency project.

However, a low number also could mean that the developer community of this project applies a strict standard when it comes to code review, so only developers who have published a high quality code with highly impactful features got approved.

Solana pull request contributors increased 164.29% from 98 to 259 in the past year.

9. Binance Futures Activities

SOLUSDT futures have relatively more buyers than the sellers in this month of February. As the time passes, the long positions on SOLUSDT futures are increasing faster than the short. 

SOLUSDT long-short ratios remain consistently and increasing higher than BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT futures. However, please take note that this long-short ratio is simply just dividing the number of accounts who are long by the number of accounts who are short, without taking any buy/ sell volume into consideration. 

At the time of writing, bear are returning to the market in the past few hours as selling volumes were building up on all BTCUSDT, ETHUSDT and SOLUSDT futures, relatively faster than their buy volumes.

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