The price of SOL is about to pump to $200, but it must first meet 3 key catalysts.

According to the Gate News bot, CoinTelegraph reports that Solana's native crypto asset SOL faced strong resistance at the $158 level on Monday. Subsequently, it fell to $143 by Wednesday, accumulating a 14% decline over the week. Traders are now concerned that due to recent price weakness and a surge in demand for leveraged SOL positions, the likelihood of it returning to the $200 level has diminished.

(Source: CoinGlass)

As of Wednesday, the open interest for SOL futures has reached 45.7 million SOL, a 19% increase from last month. While each long (buyer) is matched with a short (seller), the leverage intensity on both sides may vary. These open positions are currently valued at $6.7 billion, making it crucial to assess which side is more aggressive.

The funding rate of perpetual contracts is a key indicator for understanding market sentiment. Under neutral conditions, the annualized funding rate should be between 5% and 15%, indicating that long positions need to pay a premium to maintain the trade. When the market turns bearish, this rate often falls below this range.

(Source: Laevitas)

On Wednesday, the financing rate of SOL fell to 0%, indicating an increasing interest in bearish positions. More importantly, this indicator has failed to maintain above the 15% annualized threshold over the past three months, reflecting a general lack of confidence among bulls. Even when the price rose to $185 in mid-May, it did not reignite interest in leveraged long positions.

While SOL's return to the $200 mark is not a strict requirement for leveraged longs, a major shift in investor perceptions is crucial. In the absence of renewed confidence, the market is likely to continue to face selling pressure. SOL performance remains closely tied to network activity in Solana, which has been stagnant for the past three months after hitting an all-time high in January.

(Source: DefiLlama)

The total value locked (TVL) on the Solana network has remained stable at nearly $10 billion, while the weekly revenue of decentralized applications (Dapp) has fallen below $40 million. In contrast, these DApps generated weekly revenue of over $100 million from mid-November to mid-February.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may approve the SOL spot exchange-traded fund (ETF), which is seen as the most significant short-term catalyst for the token. However, according to the Cantor Fitzgerald stock research report, analysts believe that SOL will benefit more from the long-term growth of tokenized securities on the Solana blockchain.

According to reports, analysts assert that Solana "significantly outperforms Ethereum in every metric" and expect more and more companies to adopt SOL as a financial asset. They point out that SOL has seen strong developer growth and greater operational efficiency compared to Ethereum's more complex Layer-2 ecosystem.

Although the $200 price target for SOL seems out of reach according to derivatives data, the growing institutional interest and adoption of the blockchain could quickly reverse the current market sentiment.