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Solana (SOL) Price Today: SOL Holds $100 Ahead of Alpenglow Upgrade | Daily Market Update Oct 20, 2026
**Solana Family Daily Brief - Tuesday, October 20, 2026** ## SOL Price Snapshot (last 24h) - **SOL/USDT:** ~$104.50 - **SOL/USDC:** ~$104.50 (tracking USDT within cents) - **24h change:** about -1.2% (Binance spot) - **24h range:** $103.54 - $106.22 - **Market cap:** ~$61.5B | **24h volume:** ~$2.5-2.9B - **7-day:** roughly -3.5% (from ~$109) *Prices are approximate and were taken from several market data sources during the day; check your exchange for live quotes.* SOL spent the last 24 hours in a tight range just above the psychological **$100 floor**, which buyers defended several times last week. After a rough weekend that pushed Bitcoin under $81K and sent SOL to a one-month low, both recovered on Monday: BTC briefly topped $83K and SOL held the $100 level, easing "Black Monday" fears. ## Key Levels - **Support:** $103.3, then $102 and the critical **$100** zone. Below that, ~$97.8 (lower Bollinger band). - **Resistance:** $106 - $108 (sell wall), then **$114** - a daily close above it would break the short-term downtrend. Next target: $120. - **Indicators:** price is below the 20- and 50-day averages (~$111 / ~$109). RSI(14) is ~40 (weak, but not oversold). Open interest is steady at ~$930M with slightly positive funding, so leverage is not stretched. ## Top Solana News **1. Alpenglow goes live on mainnet tomorrow (Oct 21)** The biggest consensus upgrade in Solana's history activates at **epoch 1064**. Alpenglow replaces TowerBFT with the new Votor protocol: finality drops from **~12.8 seconds to ~150 milliseconds**, fault tolerance improves from 33% to 40%, and voting moves off-chain, which cuts validator vote costs a lot. Holders and stakers don't need to do anything. Validators must run an Agave 4.3-based client. Anza says the epoch is arriving earlier than first estimated (the earlier estimate was ~14:50 UTC), so watch for the updated countdown. **2. Solana ETFs keep bleeding in October** U.S. spot SOL ETFs have logged 10-11 straight sessions of net outflows, with roughly **$55-60M** withdrawn so far this month. That's a sharp turnaround from about **$272M of inflows in September**. Crypto ETFs in general have been under pressure, with about $1B pulled from ETH and SOL products in two weeks. **3. Treasury company SkyAI sold all of its SOL** SkyAI (formerly Sharps Technology) disclosed it no longer holds any SOL. It now has ~$224M in cash and is running a tender offer of up to ~$201M to buy back its own shares at $3. One fewer corporate holder is a negative for sentiment, though most of the selling already happened earlier this month. **4. Network fundamentals stay strong** - Q3 2026 hit a record **8.92 billion** non-vote transactions, +24% vs Q2. - Solana DeFi TVL is back above **$6.5B**, its highest level since the Drift hack. Jupiter Lend (>$1.5B) has passed Kamino as the largest lending market. - About **$15.5B in stablecoins** live on Solana. Samsung Wallet starts supporting USDC transfers on Solana across 82M U.S. Galaxy devices in late October. - RWAs on Solana are up 514% year over year (~$4.4B), and tokenized stocks are growing. Solana's share of tokenized-equity DEX volume has fallen as competing chains move in. **5. Fidelity: Solana is resilient, with some caveats** A Fidelity research note highlights two years without a mainnet outage, but flags concentration risk in stake, hosting providers and client software. ## Market Sentiment for the Next 24h: Neutral to Cautiously Bullish **Bullish factors:** Alpenglow activation is a clear catalyst. The $100 floor has held repeatedly. Leverage is moderate, and on-chain activity is at record highs. **Bearish factors:** ETF outflows continue, a treasury company has fully exited, SOL is still below its main moving averages, and the broader market is fragile after the weekend sell-off. **Base case:** range trading between **$100 and $110**, with higher volatility around the upgrade. A clean activation plus a daily close above **$108-114** would open the way to $120. Watch for "sell the news" after activation, and treat a decisive loss of **$100** as the main risk signal. *This is market commentary for the Solana Family community, not financial advice. Always do your own research.* Sources: SolanaFloor, Solana.com News, Cointelegraph, Decrypt, CoinCentral, Blockchain.News, Invezz, crypto.news, Coinbase.