Solana’s Helium balloon in danger of popping as collab ‘attracts attention’

• Solana’s new upgrade garnered attention to its network.
• NFT interest and number of stakers declined.

As Solana’s [SOL] integration with Helium [HNT] inched closer, the hype around both protocols increased. However, the attention being garnered by this event may not be all positive, and here’s why.

The Helium Network will migrate to the Solana blockchain on March 27th. Solana's TVL has been greatly reduced after the FTX crash. Helium has also been criticized by a lot of media recently. The cooperation between the two parties has attracted attention. https://t.co/2M8aP6sJhm

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) February 19, 2023

How much are 1,10,100 Solana worth today?

The integration, which will occur on 27 March, would aid both the Helium and Solana networks. Through various tweets and announcements, Solana tried to increase the hype around this collaboration.

Solana generating some hype

Due to Solana’s social media activity, the number of social mentions for the network increased by 16.8% in the last week, according to LunarCrush.

However, despite its best efforts, the overall sentiment against Solana remained negative, as evidenced by the declining weighted sentiment.

Source: Santiment

NFT enthusiasts walk away

This negative sentiment impacted Solana’s NFT markets as well. According to data provided by Dune Analytics, the traffic on a majority of Solana’s NFT marketplaces had declined.

The NFT market was one of the few sectors that continued to grow despite Solana’s difficulties last year. However, the tides have changed direction. If the negative trend continues, it may impact Solana adversely. Many blue chip NFTs associated with Solana will also become multi-chain NFTs soon or migrate to competitors like Polygon [MATIC], which would also affect the NFT community negatively.

Source: Dune Analytics

Realistic or not, here’s SOL market cap in BTC’s terms

It wasn’t just NFT enthusiasts that lost interest in Solana, as according to Staking Rewards, the overall number of stakers on the network fell by 0.99%. At press time, the number of stakers on the network stood at 595,795.  Moreover, at press time, Solana’s TVL was $268.48 million.

Source: Staking Rewards

Even though the Helium integration might add a momentary push to Solana’s state, it may take quite a while for it to come back to the $1 billion TVL mark.