SOL's meteoric rise to a new 2023 high appears to be driven by SPL tokens and a surge in DeFi and NFT activity

Solana's native token surged by 17% between Dec. 7 and Dec. 8, reaching its highest level since May 2022.

SOL's fate changed dramatically on Dec. 1 when Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, revealed a plan to integrate the Solana network, including its tokens, although no specific date has been provided. This news sparked interest in Bonk (BONK), a Solana SPL meme token listed on Bybit, KuCoin, and Solana's decentralized exchange, Orca, which gained 236% between Dec. 1 and Dec. 8.

On Dec. 6, Coinbase exchange announced the listing of Jito (JTO), an SPL token on the Solana network, which saw instant success as JTO doubled in price between Dec. 7 and Dec. 8. With the current circulating supply of 115 million, Jito's market capitalization now stands at $422 million.

The governance token of the Solana-based liquid staking protocol Jito conducted an airdrop of 80 million tokens to early users, validators, and protocol contributors. In total, approximately 9,900 addresses staked SOL using Jito ahead of the snapshot date, resulting in an impressive distribution of 4,941 JTO tokens for each participant.

The decentralized finance (DeFi) application Jito allows users to benefit from SOL staking and receive a derivative JitoSOL token in exchange for additional flexibility and yields, a common practice in the Ethereum ecosystem through the Lido platform. According to Coingecko's order book depth, Binance leads the JTO market with bids totaling $606,000.


Source - Coin telegraph