at Solana memecoin-fueled reputation may soon give way to a deeper role in digital payments, according to a new report from Standard Chartered’s head of crypto research, Kendrick Geoffrey.
Given SOL’s recent plunge to the $100 level, Kendrick has reduced his price forecast for SOL to $250 from $310 by the end of 2026. However, Kenrick remains a bull, seeing a path to $2,000 in 2030, driven by Solana’s growing role in stablecoin-based micropayments.
The bank describes Solana as moving beyond its “one-trick pony” image. By 2025, almost half of Solana’s protocol fees came from trading memecoin on decentralized exchanges. But data now shows a shift in trade flows — from meme tokens to SOL stablecoin pairs — suggesting new uses are emerging. Stablecoin turnover on Solana now significantly surpasses Ethereum that points to a different kind of activity: high-frequency, low-cost transactions.
One example is x402, a platform created by Coinbase (COIN) to support micro-scale, AI-powered payments using stablecoins. The average transaction on x402 is only six cents. Base, Coinbase’s own Layer 2 network on Ethereum, has hosted most of the volume so far, but its fees may be too high for long-term viability. Solana’s lower gas fees — often less than a cent — make it better suited for such applications, Geoffrey said.
Micropayments, which are often not viable in traditional finance due to fixed fees per Solana’s technical strengths position it to serve as the backend for this kind of infrastructure.
Standard Chartered also points to increasing institutional interest. Since October 2025, the Bitwise BSOL ETF has absorbed 78% of all net inflows into SOL-related ETFs, bringing over 1% of total supply under ETF management, according to Geoffrey. Meanwhile, digital assets now own nearly 3% of SOL.
Kendrick’s revised targets now project SOL at $400 in 2027, $700 in 2028 and $1,200 in 2029.
