Altcoins Make Gains Amid Downturn as Solana Upgrade Looms

Solana's Agave 4.2 upgrade is scheduled for the week of August 17, which could significantly boost network activity. The update aims to reduce slot times from approximately 400 milliseconds to 350 milliseconds in the first step, with a long-term target of 200 milliseconds. Storage costs are also expected to decrease by around 90% through several stages, giving developers more room to build larger applications.

Solana's payment activity is growing steadily, with July reportedly becoming a record month for Solana crypto-card spending at around $69.5 million. Additionally, Santiment reported $8.8 million in daily net ETF inflows, the strongest since May 12.

Michaël van de Poppe stated that SOL needs to hold the $73.5-$74 support area, with targets towards $120 remaining intact if that level holds.

PUMP has gained over 30% in the past week and nearly 90% in the past month, thanks to its continued revenue generation through platform activity and token burns. However, around 6.87 billion PUMP tokens are scheduled to unlock on August 12, which could create selling pressure and offset some of the support from platform activity.

BNB Chain is also making progress with its next-generation Layer-1 roadmap, targeting over 100,000 transactions per second. Its new Layer-1 testnet is planned for late 2026, followed by mainnet potentially in early 2027.