The SOL/USD pair had dropped to $145 on major markets, with some exchanges recording trades as low as $137
Solana is trading around the $160 range after recovering from a double-digit decline in early Wednesday trading.
The fall in Solana prices saw the largest drop from an intraday high of $170 to $145, threatening further losses as sentiment around the cryptocurrency turned negative.
The breakdown also saw bears attempting to solidify control below a key upward trendline, with the pullback adding to the overall losses seen in recent days. Bulls are, however, trying to hold above $150 as they aim to regain momentum toward $200.
SOL/USD chart. Source: TradingView
Why did SOL price fall?
The cryptocurrency’s value against the US dollar had reached highs near $170 in late trading on September 14, but reports of degraded performance as the network was overwhelmed with transactions appeared to trigger sudden downward pressure from panicked traders.
At one point transaction load peaked at 400,000 TPS (transactions per second), and network strain led to a fork when engineers’ attempts to resolve the incident failed. Later, after being offline for several hours, Solana announced a successful restart of the mainnet.
The team expects the system to “recover over the coming hours and full functionality should be restored,” according to an update posted on Twitter.
Despite this setback, Solana remains one of the top performers in the crypto market over recent weeks.
The blockchain platform’s native cryptocurrency, which some have dubbed an “Ethereum killer,” has risen by over 200% in the past 30 days after breaking several milestones during its parabolic rally to an all-time high of $213.47 on September 9, 2021.
At the time of writing, Solana has a market capitalization of $48 billion and currently ranks seventh among the largest cryptocurrencies by market value.