The crypto sphere is continuously evolving. Bitcoin and Ethereum’s platforms scale poorly for mass usage, even though their creators initially imagined them catering to the global population. As an answer, we have seen the emergence of more performing decentralized networks like Solana and Hedera in the past few years.
But if you haven’t followed the latest developments in the industry, you might wonder what innovations Hedera and Solana bring to the proverbial crypto table. This article will provide you with the fundamentals of both platforms. We analyze some price predictions from crypto analysts to provide you with a Hedera vs Solana technical comparison.
What Is Hedera?
Hedera Hashgraph is a distributed, public network aimed at enterprises that wish to build scalable and sustainable decentralized applications. It provides developers with advanced smart contracts that are both powerful and sustainable.
The network claims to be the most sustainable and eco-friendly blockchain alternative currently on the market, having a genuine negative carbon footprint. It achieves this by not relying on a traditional blockchain architecture. Instead, it uses the Hashgraph engine. It is an innovative mechanic for reaching consensus on the network. It increases the speed and scalability of the network exponentially, allowing for more than 10,000 TPS. The fees on Hedera are around $0.0001 USD, which can be considered negligible and sustainable for microtransactions.
The HBAR cryptocurrency is the native token of the platform. It serves as a means of payment for gas, as well as governance votes and staking. There is a maximum supply of 50 billion HBAR tokens, with 21 billion already in circulation.
Predictions for HBAR
Like most cryptocurrencies, the price of HBAR has been struggling since the beginning of the year. The crypto seems to have peaked in September 2021, reaching $0.5 per token. However, the bear market has been quite unforgiving, and the trend has only gone downwards since then.
Currently, HBAR is trading around $0.08, and its market cap is valued at $1.6 billion, putting it at #40 in the crypto rankings. That being said, the innovations that Hedera is bringing to the ecosystem are pushing analysts to conserve a bullish vision for the token.
Let’s have a look at some price predictions from reputable sources around the internet:
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Digitalcoinprice.com expects HBAR to reclaim a good portion of its value by 2025, reaching $0.17. The long-term vision is even more optimistic, with a target of $0.35 for 2030.
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Priceprediction.net expects HBAR to do even better than that. Their forecast for 2025 goes as high as $0.45, whereas, for 2030, they expect to see it reaching above $3.
What Is Solana
Solana is an ultra-scalable blockchain, claiming to be the fastest decentralized solution on the market, with a theoretical 50,000 transactions per second. As such, Solana rivals centralized payment solutions like Visa and Mastercard, while simultaneously providing the capability of deploying dApps on the network.
To achieve this, Solana utilizes a Proof-of-History consensus mechanism. While this consensus sacrifices some of the decentralization of the platform to node runners, it compensates for this with lightning-fast speeds and low fees.
The platform has enjoyed huge interest from investors and developers, which has propelled its token into the top 10 cryptos by market cap. Unlike Hedera, Solana doesn’t have a capped supply, and there are around 346 million SOL in circulation at the moment of writing.
Predictions for SOL
Like HBAR, the SOL token has been in a stark decline since the beginning of 2022. From a peak of $258 in November 2021, the price has fallen drastically and is now trading around $45 per token.
Here’s what analysts are expecting from Solana in the mid and long terms:
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Digitalcoinprice.com places SOL at $95.94 in 2025, while the website gives a target of $221.19 for 2030.
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Priceprediction.net, on the other hand, thinks that SOL will reclaim its all-time high sooner than that. For 2025, they provide a price of $213.55, whereas, for 2030, their forecast goes as high as $1,348.61.
Which Asset Has a Better Future?
It’s becoming clear that trading innovative tokens like SOL and HBAR will be more advantageous than swapping ETH to NANO. Both Hedera and Solana bring a lot of valuable innovations in the crypto sphere in terms of scalability. Currently, SOL looks like a better opportunity because of higher adoption from developers. The ecosystem is already hosting hundreds of decentralized applications with real use cases.
Nevertheless, Hedera ultimately remains more decentralized, which could play in its favor in the long run. As more projects deploy their applications on the platform, HBAR could quickly reach and surpass competitors like Solana.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2022.
