The Solana (SOL) network is scheduled for a series of upgrades that could trigger an increase in the price of the native SOL cryptocurrency. Firedancer and Alpenglow updates are expected to result in faster speeds, more transactions per block, and near-instant consensus. If the upgrade runs without a hitch, how high will the SOL increase?
Firedancer is a Solana validator client developed by the Jump Crypto team with the goal of enhancing existing infrastructure. The Firedancer validator code is a third-party client that is currently undergoing advanced testing and has limited mainnet use. Firedancer’s goal is to enable the Solana network to run on a variety of validator clients, reducing the risk of failures and network outages.
Meanwhile, the Alpenglow protocol was first announced in May 2025 and redesigned Solana’s approach to coordinating validators. Alpenglow employs Votor, a lightweight voting protocol that uses a single or dual-execution voting process to finalize blocks. This mechanism reduces latency to milliseconds while eliminating gossip between validators. Both upgrades, if successful, could support Solana SOL’s rally as the coin trades near one-year lows.
After plummeting 26% in the past 30 days, Solana SOL is trading in the $140 range at the time of writing. However, there are some bullish signs emerging. The leading Solana finance company just announced a $50 million share buyback, a move that shows strong confidence in the long-term Solana price forecast despite facing a strong market sell-off. Last Thursday, Upexi, which previously allocated $300 million to Solana, confirmed that its board of directors had authorized it to implement a share repurchase program at a time, manner and price deemed most advantageous by management.
“We view our stock repurchase program as an additional tool to enhance shareholder value and will only implement a stock repurchase when management determines that a stock repurchase will provide an attractive return on capital without compromising our ability to pursue strategic growth or maintain our strong financial position,” said Alan Marshall, president of the company. Additionally, by reducing the number of shares in circulation, Upexi is effectively increasing the amount of SOL tokens each share represents, which should and is expected to result in better return on investment (ROI) in the future once Solana recovers.