By July 2024, over 464 million Solana tokens were issued and in active circulation - but new coins arrive slowly. Although the cryptocurrency has an unlimited supply - unlike Bitcoin, of which there can only be 21 million tokens and not a single more - the Solana blockchain only issues a set amount of new tokens at the beginning of each year. This issuance is based off the year-to-year inflation rate, and can therefore vary. When SOL first launched, there was a maximum supply of around 500 million, but the blockchain burned (erased from the blockchain) 11 million of them. By December 2021, the maximum supply was around 510 million SOL.

The market cap of Solana, a cryptocurrency connected with Decentralized Finance or DeFi, grew by *** percent in the summer of 2021. Originally launched only in **********, the rapid growth in 2021 made the digital coin one of the biggest in the world in terms of market capitalization. The altcoin's move into the spotlight coincided with the growing interest in NFTs and especially DeFi, as Solana is one of the biggest blockchains in this world. It is seen as a direct competitor to Ethereum, in that it can power decentralized applications, but in a more efficient way. Solana is said, for instance, to reach transaction speeds that are similar to a VISA transaction whilst using far less energy than Bitcoin miners.

The staking values of both Solana and Cardano made up around ** percent of their circulating supply, a percentage significantly higher than for Ethereum. This difference stems from how the cryptocurrencies are created. Ethereum 1.0, similar to Bitcoin, relies on a mechanism called "Proof-of-Work" or PoW, and is similar to mining: Lots of processing power is used to verify transactions on the blockchain and those who do all that verification work — the "miners" — get rewarded with a predetermined amount of crypto. As this process became more energy-consuming and too complicated for individuals to perform — alongside the rapid growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols that demanded even more verifications — another mechanism appeared: "Proof-of-Stake" or POS. Here, people — or "validators" — commit — or "stake" — their own cryptocurrency in an automated system — often a wallet, where people will simply hold their crypto — which at certain times will randomly pick a person who gets to validate a batch of blockchain transactions. Same as before, validation leads to new cryptocurrency as a reward — essentially acting as interest after initial investment. As the amount of crypto needed can be considerable, there are also so-called "staking pools" where groups of people gather the coins needed for — or "delegate" to — an external validator, and still get the rewards. Cardano and Solana only use proof of stake, whereas the relatively new Ethereum 2.0 is also relying on it.

The price of the native coin from BNB Chain (formerly BSC) grew by 50 percent in late 2021 but was much lower in 2022. On June 30, 2025, for example, a single BNB coin was worth more than 654.92 U.S. dollars - a value that is very different from the all-time high of 600 U.S. dollars in November 2021. Regardless, Binance Coin ranked in the top 10 most expensive cryptocurrencies in 2022. Noticeable is that the price increase of BNB in November 2021 coincides with a similar price change for Ethereum (ETH) - a cryptocurrency where BNB initially originated in 2017 before coming to its own years later. BNB’s history: From reward token in 2017 to an ecosystem after 2019 As the name suggests, Binance Coin or BNB originally started as an extension of the Binance.com trading platform - the most used cryptocurrency exchange in the world. It initially functioned on the Ethereum blockchain network as an ERC-20 token, offering incentives to owners like reduced trading fees, affiliate rewards, or a lottery ticket system (“Launchpad”) that let users invest in new, Binance-selected crypto projects. In 2019, however, BNB moved away from the Ethereum network and migrated to Binance’s self-developed blockchain: Binance Smart Chain or BSC (called BNB Chain since February 2022). Here, BNB started to support a chain that initially did not focus on hosting decentralized apps but focused on high transaction speed and being able to handle large amounts of traffic. DeFi and GameFi: the main segments for BNB BSC, however, made significant strides in 2021 partly due to traffic overload and high gas prices on Ethereum as well as the growing interest in both Decentralized Finance (DeFI) and NFTs. Much like Cardano, Solana, and Terra, Binance Smart Chain consequently became a valid alternative to Ethereum: The total value locked (TVL) of BNBs blockchain within DeFi, for example, ranked only behind that of Terra and Ethereum in early 2022. Another area where Binance’s blockchain and token play a significant role is that of GameFi - or “play-to-earn” blockchain games that are powered by cryptocurrencies. Some of the more well-known and most popular NFT games like Alien Worlds and Axie Infinity run on the blockchain behind BNB.