Altcoins are struggling right now. This is Arbitrum. A quality project. And look how terrible that chart is. It’s down over 50% in the last 90 days.
Many other great projects are available at a discount too. So today, we present a question. With $1000, which coin do you prefer for the next bull run? Chainlink or Solana? Let’s make the case for each and find out.
1) Chainlink (LINK)
So our first contender for where we’d put $1000 of new money is Chainlink. Chainlink is a blue chip. It’s one of the best projects out there. It has a lot of things going for it including:
- It is the leader in its category. Oracles.
- Oracles play a vital role in smart contracts. So as smart contract adoption grows, the need for oracles does too.
- It is a leader in interoperability between chains.
Here are some other factors in the case for Chainlink. Chainlink’s CCIP (Cross-chain interoperability protocol) works like a bridge. But it’s much more. The more is how much it helps developers. A developer can create a smart contract and then deploy it to many chains at once. This alone is huge. Seamless messaging and token transfers are other reasons to use CCIP.
Source: X
Chainlink is hitting record numbers of integrations with other projects AND wallets with a non-zero balance. Nearly 750,000 wallets hold some $LINK. That makes it one of the most widely held tokens.
The BUILD program is like Chainlink’s incubator. But instead of making a financial investment, an early-stage project gets enhanced access and support from Chainlink Labs. Nearly 100 projects are BUILD members right now.
And Chainlink’s Proof of Reserves lets you monitor assets on-chain. It provides data so you can be sure the assets to back your transaction or bridge or whatever are really there. It’s a big advance in trustless data reporting so you can feel better about your transaction. Chainlink has other things going on too.
Source: X
But these things, all related to interoperability and the importance of Chainlink’s role help make the bull case. One last piece, with all these great advancements going on, $LINK is still 73% off its all-time high of $52 from 3 years ago. Quality at a discount. The big negative here is none of these great advancements have had an effect on the price of $LINK. Will that continue?
2) Solana (SOL)
Our other contender for $1000 today is Solana. Solana is one of the few projects not named Bitcoin having a good 2024 so far. SOL is now the #5 project in crypto by market value. And in 2024, its move from $109 to $145 is a ~30% return. Lots of alts that are down 40%, 50%, or more in 2024 would kill for that kind of ROI.
But while relative price strength does make a difference, it’s not the only reason we are here. The Solana narrative has changed. And the change is for the better. It still has its issues. It’s centralized. And while less frequent, there are still network outages.
Source: X
That said, Solana is less centralized than it used to be. Its Nakamoto Coefficient is now 21. That’s the minimum number of entities (usually validators) that can shut down a blockchain. So 21 seems low, and it is. Yet, it is higher than these big-name projects like:
- Avalanche with 19.
- Cosmos with 7.
- Binance with 5.
- Polygon with 4.
- Ethereum with only ONE.
So Solana is improving here compared to many of its peers. Back to the changing narrative, Solana is a serious contender to be the #1 retail crypto chain. The one real everyday people use.
Recently, Circle announced native USDC went live on Solana. Not long after that, Sphere, which allows for business payments in USDC on Solana went live too. They develop and deploy fast. And products people want. Then there are the memecoins. While we don’t advocate or recommend them, they are a very real part of the market. Especially the retail user market.
Jupiter is one of the main places to trade SOL memecoins. Its volume skyrocketed past $170 million and growing. The highest TVL DEX outside of Ethereum and EVM is a Solana DEX. Raydium is #6 overall in the industry with over $600 million in TVL.
Source: X
One last point supporting this narrative and the bullish case for Solana is total DEX volume. Last week, Solana passed Ethereum for DEX volume in a day for the first time. It won’t be the last. The big negative here is the outages as well as the reputation that it’s a VC chain. VC chains go against what many in crypto use crypto for in the first place. Can they overcome this part of their narrative?
Do you use Solana? What are your favorite projects there? Let us know in the comments below.
The Decision
So to review, the bull case for Chainlink is:
- Interoperability growth.
- Smart Contract Growth.
- More holders globally.
- Huge advancements in tech and adoption but well off of all-time highs.
Then we have the bull case for Solana, which is:
- Relative market strength in 2024 and the last year compared to other big Layer 1 chains.
- Improving decentralization.
- Native USDC to improve adoption.
- The top ETH alternative for memecoins and DEX volume.
So you have $1000 today. Which one do you choose? Chainlink or Solana? Let us know in the comments below.
Disclaimer
The information discussed by Altcoin Buzz is not financial advice. This is for educational, entertainment, and informational purposes only. Any information or strategies are thoughts and opinions relevant to the accepted levels of risk tolerance of the writer/reviewers and their risk tolerance may be different than yours. We are not responsible for any losses that you may incur as a result of any investments directly or indirectly related to the information provided. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are high-risk investments so please do your due diligence. Copyright Altcoin Buzz Pte Ltd.
