\u201cSolana aims to enable\u00a0smart contracts\u00a0to allow developers to build a wide range of decentralized finance (DeFi) apps, new crypto tokens, games, and more. When users stake their crypto, they make the underlying blockchain of that asset more secure and more efficient. And in exchange, they are rewarded with additional assets from the network, which are paid out as rewards.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n Dudas, who is also currently Vice President and Head of Stablecoin\u00a0Business Development\u00a0at\u00a0fiat-backed stablecoin issuer Paxos, told his over 129K Twitter followers:<\/p>\n According to data by TradingView, $SOL\u2019s latest price rally started around 11:00 p.m. UTC on Sunday (8 January 2023) when $SOL was trading around $13.77 and currently (as of 11:05 a.m. UTC on 9 January 2023) $SOL is trading around $16.54, which is a gain of over 20% vs USD. In fact, in the past 24-hour period, $SOL is up nearly 22% vs USD.<\/p>\n Last Friday (6 January 2023), Thomas Dunleavy, Senior Research Analyst at Messari, said that $SOL daily active wallets had reached 3X pre FTX collapse levels:<\/p>\n And Vanessa Harris, Group Product Manager at Web3 domain provider Unstoppable Domains, had a succinct explanation for the recent surge in interest in Solana:<\/p>\n On 16 December 2022, a former Goldman Sachs executive\u00a0explained why\u00a0he is bullish on smart contracts platform Solana ($SOL).<\/p>\n Prior to founding macro economic and investment strategy research service\u00a0Global Macro Investor (GMI)\u00a0in 2005, ex-Goldman executive Raoul Pal\u00a0co-managed the GLG Global Macro Fund in London for global asset management firm GLG Partners (which is now called \u201cMan GLG\u201d). Before that, Pal worked at Goldman Sachs, where he co-managed the European hedge fund sales business in Equities and Equity Derivatives. Currently, he is the CEO of\u00a0finance and business video channel\u00a0Real Vision, which he co-founded in 2014.<\/p>\n According to a\u00a0report\u00a0by The Daily Hodl, on 16 December 2022, during Pal\u2019s Annual State of the Crypto Union Address, he had this to say about Solana:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m really interested in Solana because I think the team is exceptional in what they\u2019re doing. What they\u2019re doing is building a consumer chain.<\/em>..\u00a0Now, there are a lot of naysayers about it, it\u2019s down 95%, it got caught out in the whole FTX thing, but I think it\u2019s clean now because they all had to sell so now you\u2019ve got this chain with retail adoption doing deals with Meta, Google, and all sorts of others.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve just done a deal with Discord as well and I expect more to come from them. I think they\u2019ve really understood where their place is, having a store in Manhattan selling Solana merch is great and the mobile phone, who knows where that goes? But I think they\u2019re unlocking something big.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=-Ey58QkUBJs%3Ffeature%3Doembed<\/p>\n In November 2022,according to a\u00a0report\u00a0by The Daily Hodl, during an \u201cAsk Me Anything\u201d session streamed on YouTube channel \u201cReal Vision Crypto\u201d, Pal said the following about Solana:<\/p>\n \u201cI really like Solana and I understand that the chain breaks. I also understand that they are fixing it. I also understand that\u2019s a no-no. And one of the elements was, it was concentrated in its ownership because of FTX. They are now able to liquidate it and so you\u2019re getting rid of one of the issues.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSolana itself, I think it\u2019s doing something very clever. In cryptocurrencies, what matters is narrative. Bitcoin narrative, digital gold for example. Ethereum, the distributed Internet for Web3. So where do these other chains fit in? Well, Solana has and is building a narrative, which is the consumer chain\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/cryptoglobe.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com\/2023\/01\/SOLUSD_2023-01-09_11-05-15-1280x415.png\")
<\/p>\n