As of press time, SOL is valued at $162.36, with 24-hour trading volume up 80% to $4.25 billion. Currently the 5th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, SOL has a total market cap of $72.86 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data.

The recent increase in SOL price followed a new product announcement by Robinhood Crypto via Solana’s official X account. The digital asset trading platform is launching a Solana staking product in Europe and offering a bonus program for new customers.

“Robinhood Crypto customers can now stake their Solana assets directly through the app and earn rewards by unstaking at any time,” the company said in a statement. said.

Additionally, new customers can earn a 10% bonus on net purchases for the first 30 days on the platform. Bonuses will be paid in USDC stablecoins.

Another potential factor in the price increase is the announcement dated May 15 from account X of marginfi, a decentralized portfolio margin protocol for trading on Solana.

Marginfi introduced Solana’s first Liquidity Layer and described it as a new layer for performant DeFi. The platform offers three types of integrated native returns: native staking yield through LST, the highest-yielding lending app on Solana; native token yield via mrgnlend, the first integrated stablecoin exchange in the crypto world; and native stablecoin yield via YBX, marginfi’s audited LST-backed stablecoin.

The latest surge in SOL comes after leading asset management firm Franklin Templeton confirmed Solana’s potential to become the third-largest cryptocurrency. The company pointed to Solana’s scalability and low transaction fees, which made it popular among meme tokens such as Catwifhat, BONK and WIF, which are among the top 100 cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization.

Despite concerns about network outages, Solana officially surpassed Ethereum in terms of maximum extractable value (MEV) for the first time on May 12. This success strengthened Solana’s title as the “Ethereum killer” by competing fiercely with its rival in decentralized exchange volumes at various times of the year.

Meanwhile, the broader cryptocurrency market also experienced significant gains. The total market value reached 2.39 trillion dollars, with an increase of 5.73% in the last day. Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trading at $66,100 and is up 6.6% in the last 24 hours. Ethereum (ETH) is currently trading at $3,017, up 3.7%.