- Solana’s Firedancer client moved closer to a mainnet debut after a successful testnet trial.
- SOL climbed above the 200-day SMA, but the buying pressure was not strong enough.
Solanas [SOL] new and independent validator customer, Firedancer, has achieved a major testnet milestone. In the recent milestone update, pseudonymous Firedancer engineer Cantalope Peel said,
‘Full Firedancer client built its first accepted block on Solana testnet.’
Source: X/CantelopePeel
Firedancer is led by Jump Crypto and is designed to increase network speed and decentralization.
For perspective, validator clients are software that also acts as the backbone of blockchain networks, facilitating transaction validation, the addition of new blocks, and overall security and decentralization.
So far, Solana has two validator customers: Solana Labs Validator and Jito-Solana. Jump Crypto’s Firedancer will be the third, adding to customer diversity and increasing Solana’s decentralization.
Firedancer is being touted as a better replacement for the Google-backed QUIC, a data transfer protocol that has suffered several failures in the past and derailed the processing of Solana transactions.
So the testnet now looks forward to its mainnet debut, scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2024 – a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’.
Solana market after Firedancer update
After the Firedancer update, significant purchases were made orders for SOL on major CEXs (centralized exchanges), perhaps aiming to ride out the hype.
The hype kept the SOL stuck above the 200-day SMA (Simple Moving Average) for a second day as of press time. The altcoin was trading at $143 and could rise further if it stays above $141.5.
The immediate bullish target was at $155. However, the RSI (Relative Strength Index) has struggled to stay above its equilibrium level since early June. At the time of writing it was at the neutral level.
This meant that despite the bullish recovery, there was no strong buying pressure to drive SOL forward.
Source: SOL/USDT, TradingView
However, the overall neutral reading Technical indicators showed that the SOL price could go either way.
SOL recently benefited from ETF speculation as other analysts predicted a target of $1,200 in 2025. But the question remains how the Firedancer update will boost SOL prices.