Solana Surges to April Highs on Canadian ETF and Coinbase Upgrade
Solana (SOL) has been the star of the crypto market this week, as the coin’s price surged to an April high, outperforming Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major coins. The surge comes on the heels of a slew of positive news, including the launch of a slew of Solana spot ETFs in Canada and the announcement of a major infrastructure upgrade from leading crypto exchange Coinbase.
According to data from CoinGecko, SOL is currently trading at nearly $136 – marking its highest level since March 28. Solana has gained more than 6% in the past 24 hours, and has gained nearly 23% over the past week, making it one of the top-performing digital assets in the top 100.
Canada Launches World’s First Solana ETFs
On April 17, the Canadian financial market witnessed a major milestone with the approval and listing of four Solana spot ETFs with staking functionality. The funds were issued by well-known asset managers including Purpose Investments, Evolve ETFs, CI Global Asset Management, and 3iQ.
The highlight of these ETFs is the ability to stake SOL, allowing investors to receive passive returns from staking activities without having to perform the technical process themselves. This not only opens up higher returns for investors, but also helps enhance the security and performance of the Solana network through the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, commented that these are "the world's first Solana spot ETFs with staking functionality", and said that the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has officially approved the four issuers.
Coinbase upgrades major Solana support system
At the same time, Coinbase also announced the completion of a major upgrade to the infrastructure supporting Solana on its platform. According to the official announcement on social network X, the exchange said it will:
- Increase block processing throughput by 5 times thanks to asynchronous transaction processing.
- Increase RPC performance by 4 times through the use of high-performance physical servers (bare metal).
- Enhanced system resilience through improved failover, liquidity optimization, and operational controls.
This upgrade is seen as a clear response from Coinbase after facing previous criticism for the Solana network's frequent delays in transaction processing, especially in January - when the meme coin associated with the image of former President Donald Trump appeared.
Future Vision
Although Solana ETF has not yet been approved in the United States, many major companies such as VanEck, 21Shares, and Bitwise have officially filed documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This opens up the expectation that the US market will soon welcome similar products, not only with Solana but also with XRP, Dogecoin, and other digital assets.
With strong momentum from the traditional financial market and important technological upgrades, Solana is gradually asserting its position as one of the leading blockchains for decentralized applications and DeFi, and becoming a bright spot among the innovation wave of the Web3 ecosystem.