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Solana (SOL) Price Today: SOL Holds $104 as Alpenglow Upgrade Nears – Daily News & Outlook (Oct 18, 2026)
**Solana Family Daily Brief – Sunday, October 18, 2026** ## SOL price snapshot (12:10 UTC) - **SOL/USDT:** ~$104.24 | 24h range $101.27 – $104.77 - **SOL/USDC:** ~$104.13 | 24h range $101.14 – $104.61 - **24h change:** roughly flat, about -0.2% (CoinGecko) - **Market cap:** ~$61.4B (#7) | **24h volume:** ~$1.97B SOL dipped to the $101 area overnight, then recovered above $104. It is still down about 5–7% on the week, after last week's hot US CPI print set off a broad crypto selloff. ## What moved the Solana ecosystem **1. Alpenglow is three days away (Oct 21).** The biggest consensus change in Solana's history is scheduled for epoch 1064, starting around 15:00 UTC on Tuesday. Alpenglow targets about 150 ms finality, down from roughly 12.8 seconds. It also replaces per-epoch validator vote fees (about 1 SOL) with a flat 0.8 SOL admission fee, which lowers costs for smaller validators. Validators need Agave 4.3.0, and Firedancer/Frankendancer operators have a temporary switch path. One thing to know before the dashboards change: vote transactions go away, so the headline TPS and transaction counts may drop sharply even if real user activity stays the same. That is not a collapse in usage. **2. On-chain activity is rising.** Solana recorded about 1.88M unique active addresses last week, the highest in 13 months. Circle also reportedly minted around $3.5B in USDC on Solana over the past week, which suggests stablecoin liquidity keeps flowing in. **3. ETF flows are still a headwind.** US spot SOL ETFs have had about nine straight sessions of net outflows. Recent days include roughly -$9.8M on Oct 15 (Grayscale GSOL and Bitwise BSOL) and about -$12.7M from BSOL on Oct 16. This ended a 14-week run of inflows, but cumulative net inflows are still near $1.58B. In Asia, Pando launched Hong Kong's second spot SOL ETF this week. **4. Institutional and ecosystem news.** - Fidelity published a report saying Solana "shows resilience," while flagging some areas that need continued observation. - Yuga Labs launched *Mudwater*, a physical-plus-digital BAYC card collection built on Solana, with 240,000 packs to claim. - Jupiter's new high-leverage perps beta reportedly passed $1B in volume within 24 hours. Note that the product is unaudited. - Also on the radar: USDU stablecoin expanding to Solana, Squads testing post-quantum signing on mainnet, Orca and Loopscale merging into "Formation," and the Solana Foundation opening a Shanghai office. ## Technicals and derivatives - **Support:** $101.4, then the key $100 / $99 zone (lower Bollinger Band and weekly 50 MA) - **Resistance:** $105.4, then $107.4, with the bigger ceiling at $110 - **RSI (14, daily):** ~37, approaching oversold. Stochastic is already in oversold territory. - **Derivatives:** Binance SOL open interest is up about 5% in 24h, and funding is slightly negative. Traders are adding positions without paying up for longs, which often comes before a short squeeze. - **Sentiment gauge:** SOL Fear & Greed Index at 36 (Fear) ## Outlook for the next 24 hours **Sentiment: Neutral, leaning cautiously bullish.** Oversold momentum, slightly negative funding, rising open interest and the Alpenglow catalyst on Tuesday give SOL room for a relief bounce. The first test is $105.4, and a close above $107 opens the way to $110. On the other side, ETF outflows and a weak macro backdrop are limiting upside. If SOL loses $101 on volume, a retest of the $99–100 support zone is likely. Expect choppy, range-bound trading between about $100 and $107 on low Sunday liquidity, with volatility likely rising into the upgrade. *This is community news and analysis, not financial advice. Always do your own research.* *Sources: SolanaFloor, Solana.com, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, crypto.news, Blockchain.News, CoinGabbar, CoinStats, CoinGecko, Kraken, Coinbase.*