Solana Whales Bet Big Ahead of Network Upgrade

Solana is trading at around $102 after declining by 2% on Tuesday. However, several large derivatives traders are betting that the cryptocurrency will resume its recent uptrend.

Five Hyperliquid whales opened a combined $9.11 million in SOL long positions between September 7 and September 8, according to CoinGlass data.

The positions come ahead of a Solana network upgrade scheduled for September 9, which aims to increase the maximum transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes. This change will allow developers to include more instructions within a single operation and reduce the need to divide related instructions across multiple transactions.

Despite the whale long positions, Solana's broader derivatives market continues to show cautious sentiment. The SOL funding rate remains positive at 0.0025%, indicating that long-position holders are paying shorts to keep their trades open. However, the long-to-short ratio stood at 0.94, meaning short accounts outnumbered long accounts.

Solana exchange-traded funds have recorded inflows for 10 consecutive weeks, indicating that demand through regulated investment products remains resilient despite weaker futures activity.