DeepSeek AI has issued a price prediction for Solana (SOL) that outlines a potential run to $250 by the end of 2026, arguing that the current market cycle bears little resemblance to the post-FTX collapse period that previously sent the token into a prolonged decline. The forecast begins from a current price of approximately $73.50. The comparison carries weight because FTX and its sister firm Alameda Research were among Solana's most prominent early backers, and the November 2022 collapse of the exchange exposed the network to severe liquidation pressure and reputational damage that took more than a year to shake off.

The technical case centers on two major upgrades arriving in close succession. The Firedancer validator client, developed by Jump Crypto, is already live, eliminating the single-client risk that has concerned developers for years. Solana's reliance on a single validator implementation made the entire network vulnerable to bugs in that codebase; a second, independently built client distributes that risk. Meanwhile, the upcoming Alpenglow upgrade aims to push network throughput toward 100,000 transactions per second, a threshold that would place Solana on par with traditional payment rails like Visa's advertised peak capacity.

On the institutional front, DeepSeek highlights the anticipated launch of the first US spot ETFs that would allow staking yields. Such a development would transform SOL into a yield-bearing institutional asset — described by DeepSeek as a genuine shift in capital inflows rather than an incremental improvement. The precedent for spot crypto ETFs in the United States has already been established: Bitcoin spot ETFs began trading in January 2024 followed by Ethereum spot ETFs in July 2024, collectively drawing tens of billions in assets under management within their first year.

On-Chain Metrics Support the Demand Thesis

Network usage data appears to reinforce the bullish narrative. Real-world asset tokenization on Solana has surpassed $3 billion. Stablecoin velocity on the network reportedly runs multiples higher than on Ethereum. Solana now accounts for nearly half of all global spot DEX trading volume.

A supply-side argument also underpins the demand case. Validator proposals to significantly increase burn rates and accelerate disinflation could render SOL meaningfully deflationary, introducing a scarcity premium. Simultaneously, DeFi total value locked (TVL) has stabilized near $10 billion, and overall network activity sits at all-time highs. This marks a transition away from memecoin-driven speculation toward payments and tokenized equities — a shift that institutional capital has historically rewarded.

Bear Case Acknowledges Significant Headwinds

The prediction does not dismiss the challenges of the past year. Solana has posted ten consecutive monthly red candles, representing a 76% decline from its 2025 peak. Plunging fees, falling TVL, and intense competition from other Layer 1 blockchains — including Ethereum's rollup-centric ecosystem and emerging high-performance chains such as Sui and Aptos — could push SOL below $60, with $50 identified as the next meaningful support floor.

Nevertheless, DeepSeek maintains that from $73.50 — with every major upgrade and ETF catalyst expected to land in the second half of 2026 — the risk-reward profile favors a move to $100–$150 in the near term and potentially $250 by year-end if institutional demand accelerates. The AI model characterizes this as the most asymmetric opportunity in the crypto market at present.

Price Action: SOL Trading Near Levels From Two Years Ago

According to TradingView, Solana peaked near $257 in September 2025. What followed was a severe and nearly uninterrupted decline through October and November, erasing more than half of the token's value within weeks.

The sell-off extended into early 2026. A brief recovery attempt in May pushed the price back to roughly $100 before failing, dragging SOL down to a fresh low near $60 in June. The price closed at $73.49, flat for the session, within a daily range of $72.98 to $74.07.

Support levels sit at $70, followed by the June low near $60 — the level the bear case identifies as critical. Resistance stacks first at $85, then at $100, the ceiling that rejected the May rally, and finally at a heavier zone above $140 established earlier in the decline.

The signal line has drifted sideways for months without committing to a clear directional move, currently registering at 45.56, slightly above a prior reading of 45.25. This narrow, flat gap suggests a market that has stopped declining but has not yet begun climbing.

Ten months of red candles present a formidable technical barrier, and the chart has not produced the kind of decisive reversal that would validate a rally toward $250. For DeepSeek's near-term target of approximately $100 to become plausible, Solana would first need to break through the $85–$100 band — the same zone where its previous recovery attempt failed.

DeepSeek AI Flags LiquidChain as a High-Potential Project

The broader report also identifies persistent inefficiencies in cross-chain infrastructure as one of the most widely accepted problems in crypto. Isolated liquidity pools, unreliable bridges, and slippage extracted before transactions reach their destination stem from an architectural limitation rather than an implementation flaw, according to the analysis. The infrastructure connecting Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana was built incrementally by separate teams with no shared design. Cross-chain bridge exploits have resulted in billions of dollars in losses across the crypto industry, underscoring the urgency of the problem.

LiquidChain proposes to address this at the architectural level. Operating at Layer 3, the project aims to unify isolated liquidity across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana into a single execution environment. One deployment would reach all three networks simultaneously, eliminating fragmented codebases and bridging overhead.

The project targets four specific failure points: a Unified Liquidity Layer to collapse siloed pools, Single-Step Execution to reduce multi-transaction costs, Verifiable Settlement to remove trust assumptions and counterparty risk, and a Deploy-Once model enabling a single codebase to operate across all supported chains.

DeepSeek AI anticipates a full launch. The token presale for $LIQUID is currently live at $0.01454 per token, with over $900,000 raised to date.