TLDR
- SOL is trading near $121, down about 4% in 24 hours after hitting resistance at $120.
- The Alpenglow upgrade is live on testnet and could cut transaction settlement times to under 100ms.
- Solana app revenue hit $180 million in September, its highest level in nine months.
- U.S. spot Solana ETFs pulled in $271 million in September, the largest monthly inflow in 10 months.
- Analysts see a possible drop to $110-$112 before a push toward $150.
Solana is trading around $121.63 as of October 2, after slipping nearly 4% over the past day. The pullback comes after SOL touched $120, a level that had served as a previous price target for the token. Trading volume sits at $3.7 billion, equal to about 5.6% of Solana’s circulating market cap.
The retreat follows a cooler-than-expected U.S. inflation report. Despite that data, selling pressure has continued across the crypto market this week.
Much of the current attention centers on the Alpenglow upgrade. The update is now running on Solana’s testnet and devnet, giving developers a chance to measure its real-world performance.
What Alpenglow Changes for Solana
Alpenglow is designed to cut transaction settlement times from around 12 seconds to under 100 milliseconds. Early testnet results suggest the upgrade may perform even better than that target.
Alpenglow is now live on devnet, with mainnet coming soon. ⛰️
This whiteboard session with @jacobvcreech and @TheWattenhofer is the ultimate primer on everything you need to know about Alpenglow.
Link to the full video below 👇 pic.twitter.com/5omjvn4fcv
— Solana Developers (@solana_devs) September 28, 2026
If the rollout succeeds on Solana’s mainnet, the network would gain speed advantages over both Ethereum and BNB Chain. It would also cost less to use than the Ethereum Virtual Machine, while maintaining a higher validator count than BNB.
Beyond the upgrade, Solana’s application layer has shown steady growth. Monthly app revenue reached $180 million in September, the highest figure in nine months, giving Solana a 32% share of total revenue across all blockchains.
On September 11 alone, the network generated close to $8 million in daily dApp revenue. Weekly DEX volume reached $16.59 billion during that stretch, and Solana’s cumulative DEX volume has now passed $3 trillion.
ETF Inflows and Price Levels
Institutional demand has added another layer to the story. U.S. spot Solana ETFs recorded $188.2 million in net inflows for the week ending September 25, the second-highest weekly total since launch.
Analyst Ash Crypto highlighted this trend directly. “$SOL is up +70% in the last 60 days. And the institutional demand is getting harder to ignore. Spot SOL ETFs bought approximately $271M worth of SOL in September — the largest monthly inflow in 10 months,” the analyst wrote, adding that price momentum combined with ETF demand could fuel SOL’s next move higher.
Solana is up 70% in the last 60 days.
ETFs bought $271,000,000 worth of $SOL in September, the largest buying in 10 months. pic.twitter.com/I4FNvqGtrJ
— Ash Crypto (@AshCrypto) October 1, 2026
A single day during that stretch, September 26, brought in $86.6 million, the strongest daily inflow the ETFs have recorded. Solana’s broader DeFi ecosystem has grown alongside this demand, with total value locked climbing above $6.5 billion.
On the price chart, SOL reached a recent high of about $126 before slipping into a pattern of lower highs. CoinMarketCap data showed the token near $116.9 on October 1, following closes of $122 on September 27 and $118 on September 28.
Market participants are watching whether SOL can hold its current support zone. A drop to the $110-$112 range is seen as a likely setup before any renewed push toward $150, a target tied to Alpenglow’s eventual mainnet launch.
As of the latest check, SOL was trading at $121.85.
