Solana breaks above $110 as ETF and staking inflows climb

Solana broke above the $110 resistance level as the broader cryptocurrency rally continued. SOL rose to $111.78, its highest level since January and 85% above its year-to-date low. A major upgrade reduced Solana's slot time from 300 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds, which the article describes as a 17% boost. A slot is the short window given to one validator to build and publish a block. Solana is also testing the Alpenglow upgrade, which is intended to reduce finality time from about 12.8 seconds to 100 milliseconds. The upgrade will replace Tower BFT with Votor, while Voter will replace on-chain voting with off-chain signature certificates and Rotor will replace the older Turbine system. Solana decentralized exchanges handled more than $47 billion in trading volume so far this month, compared with $62 billion in August, and the article says this was still the highest total among blockchains. Solana's stablecoin supply rose above $15 billion. SoSoValue data showed that spot Solana ETFs had received more than $28 million in inflows this month, marking their third consecutive month of inflows. The ETFs had total assets under management of $1.62 billion, with major funds associated with Fidelity, Bitwise, Grayscale and Morgan Stanley. More than 439 million SOL tokens worth $49 billion had been staked, representing a staking ratio of nearly 70% and a staking rate of 6.36%. The article says the rising staking market capitalization indicates that investors expect SOL's price to continue rising. Its technical analysis says SOL has formed a golden cross because the 50-day moving average crossed above the 200-day moving average. It also says the token has moved above the upper boundary of a bullish flag pattern, which consists of a vertical line and a descending channel. The analysis identifies $150 as the next important target and says a drop below the $96 support level would invalidate the bullish outlook.