The Next Solana? Algorand Token Sees Highest Price in More Than 2 Years Despite Market Sell-Off

ALGO, the native token of the layer 1 blockchain Algorand, logged its highest price in more than two years on Wednesday, defying a broader crypto market sell-off.

The price of ALGO tokens surged 34% on Coinbase to nearly $1.84 during U.S. trading hours on Wednesday, according to TradingView. That’s ALGO’s highest price since June 2019 when its mainnet was launched. The latest returns are especially significant considering that prices for bitcoin, along with those for most other crypto assets, have fallen sharply since Tuesday.

Algorand is also the only token that has logged positive returns among the top 15 smart-contract platforms by market capitalization, according to Messari’s smart-contract platform screen. Tokens of other popular layer 1 blockchains such as Ethereum, Cardano, Solana and Polkadot have suffered declines by as much as double-digit percentages in the past 24 hours.

Many on social media are calling Algorand the next Solana because Solana has been grabbing headlines recently and its token has hit new all-time highs.

Data from CoinGecko shows that ALGO’s trading volume over the past 24 hours mostly comes from crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase.

ALGO’s daily sentiment also spiked more than 40 points in less than four hours on crypto sentiment tracker site Trade The Chain, Nick Mancini, the site’s research analyst, said on Twitter, signaling almost instantaneous trader interest in the asset. Trade The Chain calculates a token’s sentiment by capturing data sources around the internet and contextualizing them to sentiment analysis.

Similar to many recent industry favorites such as Solana and Terra, Algorand is a layer 1 blockchain project that’s considered a competitor to Ethereum. The blockchain, which was founded by MIT professor and Turing Award winner Silvio Micali, uses a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. It is backed by several top venture capital firms including Multicoin Capital, Union Square Ventures and Digital Asset Capital Management.