Solana leads institutional inflows but this new development may prove harmful

Solana is slowly building its prominence on all fronts. After entering the top 10 cryptocurrencies in the spot market and establishing itself as one of the leading chains on the DeFi and NFT front, Solana is now targeting the institutional investors and quite successfully at that.

Solana brings in big bucks

While the performance of investment vehicles in the last few weeks had been improving, outflows in the previous 14 days certainly broke that chain. However, this week, the overall net flows exceeded the gradual incline, and CoinShares marked the largest inflows since December 2021.

The weekly investment vehicle inflows | Source: CoinShares

Of all the assets, Solana turned out to be the best performing crypto bringing in $87.1 million this week (37% of the total $193 million). Not only did it surpass every other altcoin, including Ethereum, but it also stood only $10 million below Bitcoin’s inflows.

This development made Solana a leading investment product right after Bitcoin, with the year-to-date inflows for the king coin sitting at $162 million and SOL’s inflows amounting to $95 million.

Solana leads the weekly altcoin inflows | Source: CoinShares

A lot of this was probably triggered by the recovery observed over the days, with Solana, in particular, rising by 25.29%.

Solana price action | Source: TradingView – AMBCrypto

But the direct impact of the inflows or the rally is yet to be seen on the network. Compared to January, last month observed a significant drop in monthly active users on Solana. However, over the last month, not a lot changed in terms of the user count.

Since last week though, a gradual incline has been building up when it comes to daily active users who are currently averaging at 200k addresses.

Solana daily active addresses | Source: Dune – AMBCrypto

But amidst all this bullishness lies the concern about Solana’s energy usage. Solana is known to be one of the most energy-efficient chains, and even became carbon neutral last December.

However, the energy use report released for the month of March highlighted a 36% increase in the energy use per transaction from 1989 J to 2707 J. Although compared to the likes of Ethereum and Bitcoin, this figure is infinitesimal, but it speaks to Solana’s increased usage over the past few months and how it could be a hindrance going forward.

Solana energy report | Source: Solana