Recently, whenever the market fluctuates, the most frequently asked question in the backend is: "Can SOL still drop to $8?" This question seems to be about price, but it actually reflects the market's inner thoughts—whether Solana, which collapsed together with FTX and nearly went under, has truly recovered or is just experiencing a temporary rebound.

My straightforward judgment is: unless there is another global financial crisis combined with a sector-wide black swan event, the probability of SOL returning to $8 is almost zero.

Why do I say that? First, you need to understand where that $8 came from. The price in 2022 does not represent Solana's actual value; it was purely a product of extreme panic. When FTX collapsed, Solana, as an important participant in the ecosystem, was directly dragged down with it. Even more painfully, the network itself often experienced outages, with labels like "laggy, slow, unstable" deeply ingrained in people's minds. Investor confidence completely collapsed, funds flowed out like a tide, and the price was forcibly pushed down to a historical low.

But now, the situation has reversed. Those once fatal weaknesses have been addressed one by one, even turning into competitive advantages.

Let's look at the technical changes first. After deploying the Firedancer client, SOL's transaction processing capacity has stabilized at 15,000 transactions per second, and under heavy load, it can reach 20,000. Transaction fees are as low as $0.00025, which can be ignored. More importantly, there hasn't been a serious outage in the past six months. What does this mean for a public chain? It indicates that the infrastructure has completed its transformation from "unreliable" to "relatively reliable."

The recovery at the ecosystem level is also accelerating. DeFi applications are regrouping, NFT market activity is rebounding, and the number of developers continues to grow. Although it hasn't yet reached the maturity level of Ethereum, a relatively healthy ecosystem cycle has already formed.

From a macro perspective, the overall valuation of the crypto market is completely different from 2022. Bitcoin has stabilized, and the risk appetite across the sector is recovering. Against this backdrop, projects like SOL, which have practical applications and technological breakthroughs, are naturally favored by capital.

Of course, all investments carry risks. If another systemic financial crisis occurs, crypto assets will definitely be affected. But at that point, it’s no longer about whether SOL can fall back to $8, but about the survival of the entire market.

In summary: $8 is a special price during a special period. The fundamentals have now improved. Unless a systemic shock like the FTX collapse happens again, this price level is unlikely to reappear. Instead of worrying about whether it can fall back to $8, it’s better to focus on SOL’s network health and ecosystem development progress—these are the real factors that determine long-term value.