When the Wormhole collapsed after the airdrop, Solana’s price fell due to network congestion

Solana (SOL) has dropped 7% in the last 24 hours as congestion issues plague the network.

The coin fell by 6% last week and is now trading at $175. But the fifth-largest digital asset by market capitalization isn't the only one suffering: some popular tokens operating on the network have been hit harder.

Wormhole (W), which held the airdrop earlier this week, has been rocked hard and is down 17% in the past day. More than 400,000 unique wallets were eligible for the plunge, but the token has shed 41 percent of its value since Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Jupiter's decentralized exchange aggregator Jupiter has dropped nearly 14% in value over the past day. The price is currently coming in at $1.37. Despite this, prices have still increased by 140% in the last month.

And the popular meme token DogwhipHat (YFF) has fallen 12% to its current price of $3.37. It's still big on the month, having climbed 64% over the past 30 days, but is down 31% since hitting an all-time high earlier this week.

All three are major tokens running on the Solana blockchain. They are among the biggest losers today.

Solana is a popular network that allows developers to build on the blockchain. Ethereum outperforms its own mainnet by being faster and cheaper, but recent congestion issues are undermining that advantage.

Recently, the Solana network has come under strain as more projects and users flock to use the ecosystem. As a result, those who are heavily involved in Solana hope to make changes to the network.

Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, took to Twitter late Thursday to reveal more about their struggle to fix congestion-related bugs. Meanwhile, Helios Labs founder and CEO Mert Mumtaz—a well-known Solana developer and personality—accused the undisclosed infrastructure provider of exploiting the Solana bug for extra profits.

But congestion on the Solana network isn't the only issue affecting the market today: Bitcoin fell last week and is now trading around $68,000, below the old November 2021 all-time high of $69,044. It touched a new all-time high of nearly $74,000 last month, but has since struggled to hold its position.

As a result, most of the market has fallen with it, and new tokens – like those running on Solana – can be very volatile.

Edited by Andrew Hayward.