Despite a near-term adjustment in its price targets, Standard Chartered maintains that the rise of Solana micropayments will lead the asset to reach $2,000 by the end of the decade. Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s lead analyst, reduced the 2026 goal from $310 to $250, arguing that the transition toward an economic model beyond meme coins will take additional time to scale properly.
During the current market cycle, SOL’s value has faced considerable downward pressure, trading near $101 following a sharp decline from its January highs. Nonetheless, the financial institution emphasizes that flows on decentralized exchanges are rotating toward stablecoin pairs, indicating a maturation of the ecosystem toward real and transactional use cases that will significantly strengthen its organic valuation over the coming years.
Operational dominance in the new micro-cent economy
The network’s technical superiority is evident when comparing operational costs, where Solana micropayments benefit from an average gas fee of just $0.0007. This infrastructure allows for the processing of miniscule transaction amounts, such as the $0.06 average seen in AI-driven protocols, representing an insurmountable competitive advantage over slower or more expensive networks that cannot economically sustain this massive volume of high-frequency operations.
On the other hand, the velocity of stablecoins on this protocol significantly outperforms that observed on Ethereum, demonstrating a more intense daily usage dynamic. Furthermore, the emergence of standards like the x402 protocol enables AI agents to make automatic payments without friction, consolidating the network as the backbone of the machine-driven economy that Standard Chartered predicts will dominate the global market as we approach the year 2030.
It is also noteworthy that while underperformance relative to Ethereum is expected over the next two years, the network is projected to outpace Bitcoin in percentage growth. In this way, the banking entity forecasts a progressive climb: $400 in 2027, $700 in 2028, and up to $1,200 in 2029, charting a solid recovery path for investors who prioritize technological fundamentals over the short-term speculative media hype typical of early market cycles.
Can Solana’s infrastructure displace traditional financial systems?
The blockchain capacity to handle massive flows at low cost positions it as the ideal candidate for sectors requiring high-frequency, low-latency solutions. According to Kendrick, the “order of magnitude” cost reduction enables the development of entirely new markets that were previously financially unviable, driving unprecedented institutional adoption in the fields of digital services and pay-per-use content monetization across the evolving web.
Moreover, the report notes that the share of meme coins in the network’s revenue has fallen significantly, making room for more sustainable financial activities. This shift in the chain’s “GDP” suggests that Solana is moving past its image as a digital casino to transform into real financial infrastructure, thereby attracting capital managers who seek exposure to projects with proven utility and highly diversified revenue streams for the long term.
Ultimately, the bank reaffirms its confidence in the “ultra-low-cost” model as the primary engine that will drive SOL’s price toward $2,000 in the long run. It is expected that the maturation of Solana micropayments and the integration of global payment solutions will eventually close the current valuation gap, positioning the asset among the leaders of the crypto-asset market by the end of this technological decade as adoption scales globally.
