Solana's SOL cryptocurrency has gained nearly 81% in the last 30 days and gained more than 30% in the last week, thanks to the testnet launch of the blockchain's long-awaited scaling solution, Firedancer.

SOL surpassed the $41 mark on November 2, reaching highs not seen since August of last year, according to Cointelegraph Markets Pro data.

Long dubbed a "Ethereum killer," SOL has vastly outperformed its rival, Ether (ETH), which had gained less than 11% in the previous month at the time of writing.

According to CoinShares, SOL-related investment products have also seen millions of dollars in inflows in recent weeks. SOL, on the other hand, is still down around 84% from its all-time high of nearly $260 on November 6, 2021.

Solana Foundation executive director Dan Albert announced the testnet launch of Firedancer, which Web3 development firm Jump Crypto has been working on since last August, on Oct. 31 at Solana's Breakpoint conference.

Firedancer is a new validator client for the network that, according to Solana Labs founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko, aims to improve speed, reliability, and validator diversity.

Its mainnet launch is scheduled for the first half of 2024.

Firedancer has been dubbed the long-term solution to Solana's previous network outage issues, which Yakovenko referred to as a "curse."

In 2022, Solana experienced 14 partial or major outages, but its uptime improved in 2023, with only one major outage reported in February.

However, there are concerns that SOL will face selling pressure after $56 million in FTX-linked cryptocurrency was unstaked and sent to an unknown wallet.

A further $32 million in SOL linked to FTX and Alameda Research has been transferred to a wallet believed to be the firms' designated liquidator, Galaxy Digital.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/solana-sol-price-gains-october-firedancer-testnet-goes-live

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/solana/

https://twitter.com/solana/status/1719310929593057720