Solana Whales Bet Big on Network Upgrade as Price Dips

Solana's price has dipped by 2.37% to trade at $102 on September 8, but whales are taking a contrarian stance, opening long positions worth $9.11 million.

This bullish move comes ahead of the Solana network upgrade on September 9, which will triple the transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes, according to analyst Crypto Tony.

The upgrade is expected to give Solana a competitive edge over Ethereum by allowing multiple transactions to be bundled into one, eliminating a structural bottleneck in the network.

However, despite this optimism, futures market data shows that there are still more short traders than long traders, with Solana's funding rate turning negative and derivative volume numbers dropping by 16%.