Solana (SOL) climbed back above $120 this week, a threshold it had not held since late January, capping a stretch of record ETF inflows and fresh network milestones. The token rose roughly 8% over seven days, building on a recovery that began near $75 in early August, and last traded at $121.19 on September 26, according to CoinGecko data.

Even after the rebound, SOL remains about 58% below its January 2025 peak of $294. Traders are watching $130 as the next upside target.

On the four-hour chart, SOL is moving within a rising channel. The relative strength index printed 63.09, a reading that signals momentum without indicating overbought conditions, while the Chaikin Money Flow sat at 0.09, pointing to positive money flow during the climb.

Alpenglow Reaches Devnet With 150ms Finality in Its Sights

Solana's Alpenglow upgrade arrived on devnet on September 25, a day after Anza, the development firm spun out of Solana Labs, completed a handoff on testnet. Devnet is a public testing environment where developers can exercise protocol changes before they reach the live network. Widely described as the biggest consensus change in Solana's history — consensus being the process by which the network's validators agree on the state of the ledger — Alpenglow is designed to cut transaction finality from roughly 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds. Finality is the point at which a transaction can no longer be reversed; faster confirmation could allow exchanges to credit deposits sooner. The upgrade also retires TowerBFT, the voting mechanism Solana validators have relied on since the network's launch.

Anza confirmed the transition in a post on X: “Alpenglow is officially running on devnet. The handoff completed at slot 504148999: Alpenglow genesis block formed and TowerBFT is retired. App developers: test your programs and integrations now during our observation period leading up to mainnet-beta migration.”

The testnet rollout had drawn attention a day earlier:

🚨JUST IN: Alpenglow, @Solana 's biggest consensus change in history, is set to go live on the testnet in less than 6 hours. The new system could make Solana transaction finality 85× faster, cutting it from around 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds. pic.twitter.com/ob3OX7CwuN — SolanaFloor (@SolanaFloor) September 24, 2026

Source: https://x.com/SolanaFloor/status/2103086010993463743?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Mainnet activation has not yet taken place, so everyday users have not seen the speed change. Anza has asked app developers to test their programs and integrations during an observation period ahead of the mainnet-beta migration.

Analyst Flags $150 as the Level to Watch

Analyst Crypto Patel pointed to a different threshold. In a post on X, Patel wrote that SOL had reclaimed $120 after roughly eight months but identified $150 as the key trend-change level, adding that a weekly close above it could open targets at $250, $500, and $1,000.

SOLANA PRICE PREDICTION: THE $150 BREAKOUT COULD SEND $SOL TOWARD $1,000 $SOL has finally reclaimed $120 After ~8 months, but the real HTF trend-flip level is $150. A weekly close above $150 would confirm the bullish breakout and activate my upside targets. Targets: $250 →… pic.twitter.com/BMgdzmjHyX — Crypto Patel (@CryptoPatel) September 26, 2026

Source: https://x.com/CryptoPatel/status/2103809054992945454?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Patel also noted that a rejection at $150 could send SOL back toward $75, an area he described as a possible re-entry zone. Pairing a breakout trigger with a downside level is a common structure in technical analysis.

ETF Inflows Set Records

U.S. spot Solana ETFs recorded $86.67 million in net inflows on September 25, the largest single-day total since the funds launched. Spot ETFs hold the underlying token directly and trade on public exchanges, giving investors exposure to SOL through standard brokerage accounts without the need to custody the asset themselves. Fund flows into such vehicles are widely tracked as a gauge of demand through regulated investment vehicles.

Bitwise's BSOL led with $55.73 million, followed by Grayscale's GSOL at $18.47 million and Morgan Stanley's MSOL at $5.96 million — an issuer lineup that spans crypto-native asset managers and traditional Wall Street firms.

Weekly inflows reached $181 million, the second-highest weekly figure on record, lifting total net assets across the funds to $1.96 billion.

Network Activity Hits Milestones

Solana's stablecoin market capitalization also set a record, reaching $17.394 billion on September 25, more than six times the level recorded in April 2024. Stablecoin capitalization — the of dollar-pegged tokens circulating on the network — is widely used as a gauge of the ready liquidity available for on-chain trading and payments. Daily active users on the network surpassed 8 million, exceeding the combined total of all other chains tracked.

On September 24, Solana's on-chain spot volume hit $2.69 billion, ahead of Coinbase, Bybit, and Kraken — a comparison between trading settled through on-chain venues and centralized exchanges, where a single company handles custody and order matching.

This article first appeared on CoinCentral.