Solana’s biggest week of the year began with a painful downturn, yet beneath the surface of the price charts, Solana staking tells a completely different story.
SOL slumped to $67.37 overnight heading into Sunday, marking its lowest price point since late June. This drop coincided with the opening day of Breakpoint, the Solana Foundation’s flagship conference, hosted in London for the first time from Nov. 15 to 17.
Currently, the token trades near $70, reflecting a 24-hour decline of about 6.8% and sitting more than 20% lower than its position on Nov. 4.
Even so, approximately two-thirds of all SOL remains locked in staking pools, and holders show minimal indication of fleeing.
Why SOL Is Falling
This sell-off bears little connection to Solana’s internal fundamentals, stemming instead from the broader macroeconomic pressures weighing on the entire cryptocurrency sector.
Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller expressed support for a December rate increase, pushing the CME FedWatch odds for such an action to 96.3%, as reported by BigGo Finance. Meanwhile, the crypto Fear and Greed Index has plunged to 13 into deep extreme fear, and Bitcoin has slipped below $70,000.
Demand from institutions has similarly cooled. U.S. spot Solana ETFs recorded seven consecutive days of outflows totaling roughly $58.3 million—a stark contrast to earlier in the year when inflows surpassed $1.16 billion.
Leverage exacerbated the downward trend, as roughly $67 million in long positions faced liquidation when SOL breached key support, triggering further liquidations in a sliding market.
Solana Staking Stays Near Record Levels
The narrative shifts significantly when examining network participation. Cryptoticker analysis indicates that as of Nov. 8, 434.15 million SOL was staked via voting validators, representing 68.14% of the circulating supply.
Furthermore, a recent staking report from Bitwise revealed that Solana concluded the third quarter with 69% of its token supply staked, securing the highest rate among the six blockchain networks it monitors. For comparison, Ethereum’s rate stood at 33%.
Staking has effectively established itself as the default behavior on Solana, making unstaked holdings the exception rather than the norm.
Participants earn a gross yield of approximately 5.2%, or roughly 5% net of standard validator commissions. This heavy participation reinforces network security while keeping a vast portion of the supply off open markets, thereby restricting available coins during panic-driven events like the current one.
Although the ratio has dipped slightly over the past month—with roughly 4.8 million SOL exiting active staking across 30 days—nearly 70% of the total supply remains committed, proving that the foundational holder base is holding firm.
Breakpoint Brings Fresh Catalysts
While the timing of the crash is awkward, it refocuses attention on upcoming developments. London’s Olympia expects more than 8,000 attendees this week for sessions concentrating on stablecoins, onchain capital markets, and AI agents.
Development momentum has not slowed. Arcium recently introduced Blackthorn, a private AI inference stack tailored for Solana that executes AI models while keeping prompts, outputs, and model weights encrypted. This release follows October’s Alpenglow upgrade, which reduced finality times to roughly 150 milliseconds.
Historical conference data demonstrates varied price responses. During Breakpoint 2023 in Amsterdam, SOL surged 20% throughout the event and extended its rally for weeks. Conversely, in Abu Dhabi last year, prices dipped 2.3% during the conference before staging a recovery over the following month.
Solana Price Levels To Watch
The initial threshold to defend is the overnight low close to $67.40. Maintaining this level would signal that sellers are exhausting their momentum following a harsh week.
On the recovery front, SOL must first recapture the August level near $71.90, followed by the $75 to $80 bracket lost over the last two days. Reclaiming the $80 mark would return SOL to the trading range it occupied prior to its breakdown below that threshold.
A larger objective is the 200-day moving average situated just below $89, which would signify a decisive trend reversal if breached.
Should the $67 support level fail, the psychological milestone of $60 emerges as the next major line of defense.
At present, Solana staking metrics indicate that the majority of participants prefer holding and collecting yields over selling into market panic. For continued updates, follow the latest altcoin news.
What do you think?
Can Breakpoint spark a SOL recovery this week, or does the price need to retest $60 before Solana’s strong staking base pays off?
Written by
Yuki Yamamoto
