$1.6 trillion global investment titan Franklin Templeton believes Solana (SOL) is set to beat out Tether’s USDT and BNB (BNB) to become the third-largest crypto after Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

Solana To Join BTC, ETH As Top Cryptocurrencies

In a recent report titled “Solana: Accelerated Adoption,” Franklin Templeton’s digital assets unit has predicted that Solana’s native token, SOL, is primed to establish itself as a top crypto asset after the two crypto majors, BTC and ETH.

“Our view is that Solana’s growth is likely to continue because it is well positioned to capture the next wave of crypto adoption, solidifying itself as the third major crypto asset after Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH),” said the report.

Franklin Templeton’s analysts note that Solana has witnessed a substantial increase in total fees and decentralized exchange volumes over the past year, demonstrating strong growth.

The analysts also believe Solana is “uniquely qualified” to seize the next wave of adoption in several sectors, including decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), payments (especially micropayments), compression non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and centralized limit order books (CLOBs) with payment-for-order-flow. 

The asset manager further observes that Solana has managed to capture the lion’s share of the surge of crypto activity, particularly caused by major airdrops in the Solana ecosystem like Jito and Pyth. 

“These airdrops created a billion dollar plus wealth effect in the ecosystem, driving SOL and other Solana ecosystem tokens higher, especially meme coins,” Franklin Templeton states.

The Wall Street giant expects the activity in the Solana network to continue skyrocketing in the coming months due to more airdrops and the resurgence of the meme coin craze. 

“Further, the Solana ecosystem has more expected airdrops in the coming months, which should continue adding a wealth effect to the ecosystem. And memecoin activity has shown no signs of slowing down on the network.” 

Solana Congestion Challenges Remain

It’s worth mentioning that Franklin Templeton first set sights on Solana earlier this year, expressing admiration for Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko’s vision of it as a single atomic state machine, a “powerful use case.” The asset manager was also impressed by the notable developments in the Solana ecosystem during Q4 2023.

Notably, the unprecedented demand for Solana has come at a huge price. Escalating congestion issues have plagued the network for months, causing transactions to fail and making it hard to perform even basic tasks. 

Nonetheless, Solana builders have already released a mainnet beta update, v1.17.31, to address the congestion — though the issues have not been fully resolved.