Standard Chartered has cut its end-2026 price target for Solana (SOL) to $250 from $310 but kept a bullish longer-term path to $2,000 by 2030, citing a shift in network activity toward stablecoin-based micropayments and an expected phase of greater performance dispersion across crypto assets.
Why the 2026 Target Was Trimmed
The bank’s digital assets research team said the revision reflects a more cautious view of how quickly Solana can translate its cost and throughput advantages into durable, fee-generating activity beyond speculative trading. Standard Chartered characterized the current market drawdown as a period when “performance differentiation” should become more visible, rather than a market where all tokens move as a single risk bucket.
“When we initiated coverage of Solana in May 2025, we observed that activity on the network was largely concentrated in memecoin trading on DEXs,” said Geoffrey Kendrick, head of global digital assets research at Standard Chartered. “Composition of DEX flows has shifted from memecoin trading toward SOL–stablecoin pairs.”
Activity Mix Rotates Toward Payments
According to Kendrick, the rotation away from meme-focused trading accelerated through 2025—peaking around mid-January’s “Trump” token launch—and moved toward tokenized dollars. While overall on-chain volumes have cooled, the bank argues Solana’s DEX activity increasingly resembles a payments-adjacent rail rather than a single-cycle speculative venue.
Standard Chartered highlighted Solana’s ultra-low transaction costs as a key enabler for “micropayment” use cases, including AI-driven payments where even modest fees can impair unit economics. Kendrick said stablecoin velocity on Solana is already two to three times higher than on Ethereum, suggesting the network may be carving out a role for high-frequency, low-value transfers. The bank linked this potential to emerging, “internet-native” payment protocols such as Coinbase-backed x402, while cautioning that adoption will take time to translate into market leadership.
Longer-Term Outlook Remains Intact
Despite the 2026 haircut, Standard Chartered’s longer-term trajectory remains aggressive, with the bank expecting Solana’s “micropayments” phase to matter more as the cycle matures. The firm also expects Solana to lag Ethereum in the 2026–2027 window, but to outperform Bitcoin over 2027–2030.
- 2026: $250 (reduced from $310)
- 2027: $400
- 2028: $700
- 2029: $1,200
- 2030: $2,000
The multi-year schedule was reported by The Block and is based on Standard Chartered’s research framework.
Market Context
Solana is a high-throughput Layer-1 blockchain designed for low-cost transactions and scalable decentralized applications. Standard Chartered is a multinational bank with a growing digital assets research practice. At press time, SOL traded around $96.93, according to TradingView data.