Solana Breaks April Highs Following Canadian ETF Debut But Price Rally Slows at Key Resistance

Solana (SOL) surged to its highest price point in April, outperforming major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP. 

The token’s momentum has positioned it as one of the top-performing assets among the 100 largest cryptocurrencies, gaining nearly 25% over the past week.

SOL ETF Launch And Coinbase Upgrade Ignites Investor Optimism

Solana’s bullish trend follows the April 14 launch of Canada’s first spot Solana ETFs. 

Approved by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), the initial product from asset manager 3iQ was soon joined by similar filings from Purpose, Evolve, and CI Global Asset Management.

🚨BREAKING NEWS: 🇨🇦Canada to launch world’s first spot $SOL ETFs on April 16, per @EricBalchunas https://t.co/8qNDBsyEWR pic.twitter.com/dLEkvWLJzC

— Solana Daily (@solana_daily) April 14, 2025

These exchange-traded funds include staking capabilities, allowing issuers to earn yield on behalf of investors by participating in the Solana network’s proof-of-stake consensus.

While Canadian regulators have moved swiftly, similar products in the U.S. remain pending. Firms like VanEck, 21Shares, and Bitwise have already submitted applications to the SEC for spot SOL ETF approval.

Further boosting Solana’s rally was Coinbase’s announcement of major backend upgrades.

The exchange revealed that it now processes Solana transactions asynchronously, resulting in a fivefold increase in block processing throughput. 

We’ve been hard at work scaling our @Solana infrastructure to be faster, more resilient, and more scalable.

We have upgraded our systems to:
→ Process transactions asynchronously, leading to a 5x improvement in block processing throughput.
→ Leverage bare metal machines for 4x… pic.twitter.com/WFINzCutNK

— Coinbase Platform (@CoinbasePltfrm) April 17, 2025

Additionally, the use of bare-metal servers has led to a 4x improvement in Remote Procedure Call (RPC) performance.

This move comes after Coinbase faced user backlash in January due to delayed Solana transactions, particularly during high-volume trading events such as the meme coin launch tied to Donald Trump.

Solana Network Fundamentals Remain Strong Despite Dwindling Activity

Despite a sharp drop in meme coin activity, down over 75% from its peak, Solana continues to dominate blockchain revenue metrics. 

According to Blockworks Research, Solana’s decentralized applications (dApps) now generate over 70% of all on-chain revenue.

Source: X/@_ryanrconnor

Syndica’s latest data further confirms this, showing Solana dApps accounted for 46% of total on-chain revenues across all networks in March.

 Solana also briefly surpassed Ethereum in total staked value. 

As of April 20, more than $53.9 billion worth of SOL has been staked by 505,938 wallets, yielding an annualized return of 8.31%, based on on-chain data. 

SOL just flipped ETH in "staking market cap". pic.twitter.com/bhbrPFsoFB

— Alex Svanevik 🐧 (@ASvanevik) April 20, 2025

Ethereum’s staked value, in comparison, stood at $52.56 billion across 34.07 million ETH, per Beaconcha.in.

Source:Beaconcha.in.

This flippening is partly attributed to SOL’s remarkable outperformance against ETH over the past two years. 

Since June 2023, the SOL/ETH ratio has soared from 0.0088 to 0.08516, a nearly tenfold increase, according to CoinGecko.

Technical Setup: Bullish Trend Slows as Consolidation Forms

As of April 21, the SOL/USDT 1-hour chart shows that the price is trading around $137.88, following a strong upward move that has recently begun to show signs of consolidation.

A symmetrical triangle pattern has formed, which typically acts as a continuation pattern but in this case could also be interpreted as a potential reversal signal due to weakening momentum.

$SOL/USDT 1-hour chart/ Source: TradingView

The breakdown below the triangle’s lower support line indicates that bullish momentum may be fading. This suspicion is further supported by multiple instances of bearish divergence on the RSI (Relative Strength Index).

Each time the price made a new high, the RSI registered a lower high, classic signs of bearish divergence and exhaustion in buying strength. 

The current RSI level sits at approximately 43, suggesting that the asset is leaning toward bearish territory, with little immediate sign of a reversal in momentum.

Price action is hovering near the upper-mid Fibonacci Bollinger Bands (FBB), with key support levels situated at $136.07 and $132.93. 

$SOL up +50% past 2 weeks. Top of channel holding, forming early right shoulder. Watch Fib levels (0.618 at ~$118, 0.786 at ~$70) for reversal zones. Bullish if breaks $136, bearish below $100 ie the .786 retrace level #Solana pic.twitter.com/JnpyZDN6kI

— Disrupt Yourself (@EasychartsTrade) April 20, 2025

The latter level is particularly significant as it aligns with a previous resistance that may now act as support.

Meanwhile, overhead resistance remains firm around $141.15 and extends up to $146.22. 

A failure to break this upper range on the last attempt indicates that bulls may be losing control near these highs.