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British banking giant Standard Chartered remains optimistic about Solana ($SOL), which has recently fallen to levels around $100, in the long term.
Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s head of cryptocurrency research, predicted that $SOL could reach $2,000 by 2030.
Kendrick revised his short- to medium-term price expectations downwards. Accordingly, the target for $SOL at the end of 2026 was lowered from $310 to $250. However, the analyst points to strong upside potential in long-term projections. According to the new estimates, $SOL is expected to reach $400 in 2027, $700 in 2028, and $1,200 in 2029.
A Standard Chartered report stated that Solana is beginning to shed its image as the “number one memecoin network.” In 2025, approximately half of the network’s protocol revenue came from memecoin transactions on decentralized exchanges. However, recent data indicates a shift in transaction flows from memecoin pairs to $SOL-stablecoin pairs.
According to the report, stablecoin transaction volume on Solana has now surpassed that of the Ethereum network. This points to a new use case where high-frequency and low-cost transactions are gaining prominence.
One of the most striking examples of this transformation is the x402 platform developed by Coinbase. This platform, which facilitates AI-powered micro-payments via stablecoins, has an average transaction amount of only 6 cents.
While Coinbase’s Base, a Layer-2 network on Ethereum, has handled the majority of the volume to date, the long-term sustainability of its transaction fees is a matter of debate. According to Kendrick, Solana’s low gas fees, often below 1 cent, offer a more suitable infrastructure for such micro-payment applications.
Micro-payments, which are uneconomical in the traditional financial system due to fixed transaction fees, could pave the way for new internet services such as machine-to-machine (M2M) payments, AI services, and social applications based on a “pay-as-you-go” model. Standard Chartered notes that Solana’s technical capabilities could play a significant role in the background of this infrastructure.
The report also stated that institutional investor interest has strengthened. Since October 2025, Bitwise’s BSOL ETF has attracted 78% of the net fund flows into $SOL-linked ETFs, and more than 1% of the total supply is under ETF management. In addition, the amount of $SOL held by digital asset treasuries has reached approximately 3% of the total supply.
*This is not investment advice.
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