On 25 October 2026, SOL traded at about $100.62, according to CoinGecko. That is about 66% below its all-time high of $293.31 on 19 January 2025. The newest development is Alpenglow, the largest change to Solana's consensus since the network launched. It went live on mainnet on 21 October 2026. No one can tell you where SOL will trade next. What this page can show is how the price has moved through its dated milestones, why that path defeats single-number forecasts, and which verified facts actually move the price.
The latest: Alpenglow is live on mainnet (21 October 2026)
- What changed. The Solana Foundation says Alpenglow went live at the start of epoch 1064 on Wednesday, 21 October 2026, at about 13:36 UTC. Anza's Alpenglow page marks mainnet-beta as completed. Testnet and devnet were completed on 24 and 25 September.
- Finality. Under the old TowerBFT consensus, a transaction took about 12.8 seconds to become final. Alpenglow targets about 150 milliseconds. The Foundation calls 150 ms "an expectation, not a constant".
- What is not live yet. Only Phase 1 is live. That is Votor, the new voting protocol, shipped in the Agave 4.3 validator client. Phase 2, Rotor, redesigns how blocks spread across the network. The Foundation says it "is not yet scheduled".
- How it was approved. Validators approved the proposal, SIMD-0326, in a stake-weighted governance vote that ended on 2 September 2025. Blockworks reported 98.94% in favour.
- Shorter slots. Earlier in October 2026, Solana's official changelog reported that 200 ms slot times had reached mainnet. Before that, slots were 250 ms.
Upgrades change how the network performs. They do not set the token's price. SOL traded around $100 in the days after activation, about where it was beforehand.
What SOL is used for
According to Solana's documentation, every transaction pays a fee in SOL. The base fee is 5,000 lamports per signature. Half of the base fee is burned and half goes to the validator. Optional priority fees go entirely to the validator.
SOL is also staked. Holders delegate it to validators, who process transactions and secure the network. Validators with more delegated stake are chosen more often to produce blocks and earn more rewards. They share those rewards with delegators, minus a commission. The docs also say there is currently no slashing built into the protocol.
CoinGecko reports a circulating supply of about 589.8 million SOL and a total supply of about 636.4 million. Market capitalisation was about $59.4 billion on 25 October 2026.
Price history: the dated milestones
| Date | SOL price (USD) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 11 May 2020 | $0.50 (all-time low) | CoinGecko |
| November 2021 | nearly $260 (peak at the time) | Decrypt, 28 Dec 2022 |
| 28 December 2022 | fell below $10, low of $9.90 | Decrypt, citing CoinGecko |
| 19 January 2025 | $293.31 (current all-time high) | CoinGecko |
| 31 December 2025 | about $124.83 | CoinGecko daily history |
| 1 June 2026 | about $82.34 | CoinGecko daily history |
| 25 October 2026 | about $100.62 | CoinGecko |
The 2022 crash came with the collapse of FTX. By 28 December 2022, Decrypt reported that SOL had lost nearly 96% of its value from the November 2021 peak.
SOL's dated price milestones
How far has SOL's price swung between the dated milestones in this article, from its all-time low to 25 October 2026?
Data table
| Item | USD | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 11 May 2020 (all-time low) | 0.5 | |
| Nov 2021 (peak at the time) | 260 | |
| 28 Dec 2022 (low) | 9.9 | |
| 19 Jan 2025 (all-time high) | 293.31 | |
| 31 Dec 2025 | 124.83 | |
| 1 Jun 2026 | 82.34 | |
| 25 Oct 2026 | 100.62 |
These are single dated prices from the article's table, not a continuous price history, and they say nothing about where SOL will trade next.
What the price path says about forecasts
- Big drawdowns arrive fast. SOL went from nearly $260 in November 2021 to below $10 by 28 December 2022, a loss of nearly 96% in about 13 months. Any year-end target set before that fall was out of reach within the same year.
- Single year-end numbers hide the path. In 2025, SOL set its record of $293.31 in January and ended the year near $125, less than half the peak. A forecast could be "right" for one week and wrong for the other 51.
- Recoveries are uneven. From about $82 on 1 June 2026, SOL climbed to about $100 by 25 October, yet it still sits about 66% below the record.
What actually moves SOL
- Network performance and reliability. Lower fees and faster finality are what Solana competes on. Alpenglow's real-world finality, once measured independently, will matter more than the 150 ms target.
- Access through regulated products. On 28 October 2025, Bitwise launched BSOL on NYSE. Bitwise described it as the first US exchange-traded product with 100% direct exposure to SOL, and it plans to stake all of the fund's SOL. Flows into products like this now add to SOL demand, in both directions.
- Broad crypto risk appetite. The 2022 collapse showed that events across the industry can outweigh anything a single chain does.
- Supply. Half of each base fee is burned, and staking rewards create new tokens. The net effect depends on how busy the network is.
How to read any SOL price prediction
- Check the date it was published and the price at that time. A target means little without its starting point.
- Ask what the method is. Many forecast sites extrapolate past prices with an algorithm and publish no assumptions.
- Prefer ranges and scenarios over a single number, and test them against the dated milestones in the table above.
- Remember that perpetual futures and other leveraged products can wipe out the margin you put up long before a long-term forecast is tested.
