Solana (SOL) has gained over 18% in the past 30 days, trading between $19 and $25 as it prepares for its Alpenglow consensus upgrade. XRP (XRP), meanwhile, has climbed roughly 7.4% this month, driven by growing institutional adoption in cross-border payments. These coins are being closely watched by traders for their technical momentum. However, a new competitor, BlockDAG, is not chasing price action; it is building its infrastructure from the ground up. With over $410 million raised in its presale, a locked price of $0.0016, and more than 26.5 billion BDAG coins already sold, BlockDAG is taking a hands-on approach to utility and growth.
While Solana and XRP aim to improve their ecosystems through software-focused upgrades and regulatory positioning, BlockDAG is shipping miner hardware, deploying explorer tooling, launching a testnet, and activating account abstraction to solidify a functional network. This is not a speculative framework; it is a public tech rollout.
BlockDAG: Infrastructure-First Strategy and Awakening Testnet
BlockDAG’s entire growth story starts with infrastructure, not speculation. Its hybrid consensus model merges the scalability benefits of DAG architecture with the proven security of Proof-of-Work.
The Awakening Testnet, launching on September 25, will enable full core blockchain activation, allow miner hardware to sync via the Stratum Protocol, and introduce explorer tools for real-time activity monitoring. Account abstraction via EIP-4337 groundwork is also part of this rollout, laying the foundation for smart accounts and broader dApp flexibility.
The focus is usability and structure; tools like Dashboard V4 simulate a live exchange environment, while the BlockDAG Explorer tracks smart contracts and transaction flows across its unique multi-parent DAG design. With over 3 million mobile miners via the X1 app and 20k physical X-Series miners already shipped to over 130 countries, BlockDAG is converting its user base into a functioning network.
Currently, in batch 30, it is priced at $0.0016. Backed by a 25% referral model and gamified buyer incentives, the project has sold over 26.5 billion coins and raised more than $410 million, placing it among the top crypto coins 2025 investors are watching.
Solana: Alpenglow Upgrade and Sub-200ms Finality
Solana’s focus in 2025 is squarely on technical refinement. The Alpenglow upgrade aims to modernise its consensus mechanism, targeting finality times below 150 milliseconds. This is a major push to improve user experience, especially in DeFi and high-frequency trading, where every millisecond counts.
Solana’s claim to fame has always been its high throughput, boasting upwards of 65,000 transactions per second under optimal conditions. But issues with downtime and validator centralisation have long cast a shadow. The upcoming upgrade addresses finality without overhauling the rest of its Proof-of-History and Tower BFT stack. While Solana remains a leader in transaction speed, the challenge remains in how well it can balance decentralisation and network reliability.
The question behind most Solana (SOL) price prediction models is not speed but resilience. With institutional pressure for ETF pathways and consistent Layer 1 performance, the coming months will test whether Solana’s software-first approach can meet global scalability standards.
XRP: Payments-Focused Growth and Regulatory Clarity
XRP’s growth has been far more regulatory than architectural. The token recently saw a 7.4% price rise as demand increased in Southeast Asian corridors and as Ripple secured additional partnerships with institutional money movers. The XRP Ledger continues to process transactions reliably, though it hasn’t introduced major changes to its consensus model. XRP’s core strength lies in its use case: fast, low-cost international money transfers.
But the question most traders ask when looking at XRP (XRP) price prediction models is whether this stable infrastructure can produce long-term upside or whether the market has priced in its payment utility already. Unlike Solana or BlockDAG, XRP is not building tooling for dApps, miners, or testnet experimentation. Its performance is stable, but technical upgrades have been modest. The recent wave of SEC-related clarity gave XRP a boost, but without deeper network functionality or architectural shifts, it remains to be seen whether that momentum can continue.
Conclusion
Solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP) continue to move forward in their own lanes, one pursuing ultra-fast consensus and the other pushing for institutional dominance in cross-border settlements. But BlockDAG is creating something fundamentally different: an integrated, hardware-synced, hybrid-consensus ecosystem that prioritises structure before price action.
With $410 million raised, 26.5 billion coins sold, and a testnet already going live with real miner sync and account abstraction, BlockDAG is building from the ground up while others refine from the top down. For investors evaluating Solana (SOL) price prediction and XRP (XRP) price prediction charts, the question is about upside within existing frameworks. For those watching BlockDAG, the story is about a network that hasn’t even hit its listing, and yet already has the infrastructure of a live chain. As far as technical growth is concerned, 2025 could belong to the coin that’s already shipping tools, miners, and protocols, not just promises.
Presale: https://purchase.blockdag.network
Website: https://blockdag.network
Telegram: https://t.me/blockDAGnetworkOfficial
Discord: https://discord.gg/Q7BxghMVyu
