Key takeaways:

• SOL is struggling to hold $80 as a 75% decline in futures open interest shows investors are moving towards exits rather than making modern bets.

• Solana remains highly dependent on retail and memecoin business, while Ethereum maintains a leading position in high-value decentralized finance.

Solana’s native token, SOL (SOL), has hit a wall, failing to break above $89 multiple times over the past two weeks. This sluggish price action follows a rejection at $145 in mid-January and a piercing decline to $67.60 during the February 6 crash. Demand for bullish leverage has essentially evaporated as investors brace for more pain.

Those betting against SOL are currently paying an annual rate of 20% to keep their tiny positions open, which is a infrequent and aggressive move. When funding rates remain negative for more than a week, it shows that the bears have a lot of conviction. For comparison, ETH’s annual funding rate was 1% on Wednesday. While this is below the usual neutral level of 6%, it is a far cry from the uneven levels seen in SOL.

Frustration is mounting as SOL has underperformed the rest of the cryptocurrency market by 11% over the last 30 days.

While SOL still retains its place among the top seven cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, the 67% decline from its peak of $253 in September 2025 has taken a toll on both onchain and derivatives activity. In fact, open interest in SOL futures is down 75% from a high of $13.5 billion seen just five months ago.

Lower SOL prices reduce incentives, discouraging long-term holding

This price drop also hurts decentralized applications (dApps) built on the Solana platform. Revenues are falling across the board, from staking and decentralized exchanges to startup platforms and lending platforms. Investors are starting to worry about a “death spiral” in which falling prices lead to fewer incentives, making it harder for people to justify keeping SOL in the long run.

Weekly dApps revenue on Solana dropped to $22.8 million, the lowest level since October 2024. Interestingly, memecoin startup Pump generated $9.1 million in revenue in those seven days, representing 40% of the entire network. For comparison, weekly revenue for DApps on Ethereum was $16 million, up 2% from the previous month.

Related: Pump.fun introduces cashbacks for merchants adapted to the memecoin model

Unlike Solana, the top revenue-generating DApps on Ethereum are Sky, Flashbots, and Aave – key infrastructure players for decentralized finance. Essentially, Solana is heavily reliant on retail onboarding and the memecoin sector, while Ethereum has secured leadership in total value locked (TVL) and employ cases requiring greater decentralization.

This tender institutional demand is evident in SOL’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Solana’s high trading volume and second-place finish in TVL were not enough to convince time-honored investors to buy the SOL ETFs offered by Bitwise, Fidelity, Grayscale, 21Shares, Coinshares and REX-Osprey.

While this is significant, Solana’s $2.1 billion in ETF assets under management is still 86% less than Ethereum’s $15.8 billion. Many investors have lost confidence that demand for Solana DApps will enhance soon, which is likely a side effect of the high hype around memecoins and starters.

For SOL to regain its bullish momentum, it will likely need a boost from sectors such as artificial intelligence infrastructure and prediction markets. These areas show promise, but competition is fierce.

Currently, tender SOL derivatives and Solana onchain indicators are a warning sign. Any further disappointment could trigger another price decline, putting the already shaky support level at $78 at solemn risk.