In the cyclical rotation of the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin and Ethereum often serve as the 'leading indicators' of a bull market. However, in each cycle, there are always assets whose value is obscured by short-term sentiment, which release astonishing explosive power when the market shifts. XRP (Ripple) and SOL (Solana) are currently overlooked targets by many investors — the former is undervalued due to long-term regulatory shadows that have masked its commercial value post-compliance, while the latter has its ecological recovery resilience overshadowed by historical technical controversies. Currently, with changes in the market environment and improvements in their fundamentals, these two major tokens are gradually revealing their potential to become the 'entry-level assets' of the next bull market.
1. XRP: Value reassessment of compliant payment networks after regulatory thaw
XRP's “neglect” largely stems from the “security attribute” lawsuit initiated by the U.S. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) since 2020. This years-long tug-of-war not only suppressed its price performance but also temporarily made the market forget its core value as a cross-border payment tool — by the end of 2024, Ripple (the company that issues XRP) has partnered with over 400 financial institutions worldwide, covering scenarios such as cross-border remittances and foreign exchange settlements, while XRP's function as a settlement medium among these institutions has never ceased.
In August 2024, the SEC reached a final settlement with Ripple: XRP was recognized as a “non-security,” with fines only imposed for early unregistered institutional sales. This outcome completely cleared the compliance barriers for XRP — within a week after the settlement, U.S. crypto exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken resumed XRP trading, with daily trading volume surging by 300%; more importantly, large banks (such as Bank of America and HSBC) that had previously held a wait-and-see attitude due to regulatory concerns began piloting “Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) + XRP” cross-border settlement solutions with Ripple, covering small cross-border payments in 12 countries, achieving an 80% increase in settlement efficiency compared to traditional SWIFT and a 60% reduction in costs.
From the data, the current market capitalization of XRP is about $35 billion, ranking 6th among crypto assets, which is 40% lower than its peak of $90 billion during the 2021 bull market. However, from a fundamental perspective, the trading volume of “On-Demand Liquidity (ODL)” within its ecosystem has grown for six consecutive quarters, reaching $18 billion in Q3 2024, a year-on-year increase of 75%. With the acceleration of digitalization in global cross-border payments, XRP's value as a compliant settlement layer is significantly underestimated, which is the core logic that may explode in the next bull market.
2. SOL: Technological resilience and ecosystem recovery, a re-recognition of performance advantage
Solana was once dubbed the “Ethereum killer” due to explosive growth in the 2021 bull market, but multiple network interruptions (over 10 times throughout the year) and the collapse of FTX (FTX was an important early investor in Solana) in 2022-2023 led to a decline in its reputation, with prices dropping from a peak of $260 to $10 by the end of 2023, resulting in a market value decline of over 95%, becoming a “discard” in the market.
However, what has been overlooked is that the Solana team launched the “Firedancer” upgrade in 2023, which has completely resolved the network stability issue: by reconstructing the consensus engine, the fault tolerance of nodes has been increased tenfold, and since 2024, the network has had zero interruptions, with transaction confirmation times stabilized at 0.4 seconds, and transaction fees maintained at $0.0002 (only 1/20 of Ethereum Layer2). The return of performance advantages has led developers to flow back — in Q3 2024, 120 new DApps (decentralized applications) were added to the Solana ecosystem, covering fields such as DeFi, NFT, and social finance, with total users exceeding 8 million, a 300% increase compared to the beginning of the year.
More importantly, Solana has shown unique advantages in the “low-cost large-scale application” scenario: In May 2024, social media giant Instagram launched a “digital collectibles wallet” on Solana, allowing users to mint and trade image NFTs for free, with transaction volume exceeding $500 million within three months of launch, driving Solana's on-chain NFT trading volume to surpass Polygon, ranking second; in the same month, payment company Stripe announced support for the Solana payment interface, allowing merchants to receive SOL payments at a rate of 0.1%, with 100,000 small and medium-sized merchants already connected.
The current market cap of SOL is about $12 billion, only 5% of its peak in 2021, but the TVL (Total Value Locked) within the ecosystem has recovered from a low of $400 million in 2023 to $3.5 billion, and developer activity (GitHub submission volume) ranks third among public chains (only behind Ethereum and Avalanche). As user demand for “high cost-performance interaction” rises in the bull market, Solana's performance advantage will once again become the core driving force for capital inflow.
3. Why is it an “entry-level asset”? The neglected underlying logic
Entry-level assets in the crypto bull market often possess two key characteristics: first, they have clear application scenarios to support them, rather than being purely speculative targets; second, there is a significant deviation between current valuations and fundamentals, allowing for repair space.
Both XRP and SOL conform to this logic: The cross-border payment scenarios of XRP have been validated by financial institutions, and its compliance has opened the door for traditional capital to enter; SOL's high-performance network is currently supporting large-scale C-end applications, becoming a low-threshold entry for ordinary users to access Web3. More importantly, both currently have market attention (Google search index, social discussion volume) at historical lows, far below Bitcoin and Ethereum, and this “neglect” is precisely nurturing opportunities for valuation repair.
The core driver of the next bull market may shift from “narrative hype” to “application landing.” When market funds begin to search for “undervalued value targets,” XRP's compliant settlement network and SOL's high-performance application ecosystem are expected to become key entry points for re-pricing of funds.
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