Alex Carchidi Names Solana (SOL) a Top Hold to 2031 as Tokenized Assets Reach $4.4 Billion

Solana's $4.4 Billion Tokenization Case

Analyst Alex Carchidi has named Solana (SOL) one of four cryptocurrencies he considers worth holding for the next five years, alongside NEAR Protocol, Zcash and Hyperliquid. The picks, laid out on October 17, come with a clear division of labor: Solana competes in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, NEAR in AI-driven blockchain infrastructure, Zcash in privacy and Hyperliquid in decentralized derivatives. Bitcoin and Ethereum should still anchor most portfolios, in his reading, but these four are the assets with a credible case beyond the majors. Each project, the argument goes, already secures genuine usage in its own specialty, and coming technical upgrades plus tighter token economics could convert that usage into price support through 2031. Solana carries the most concrete numbers in the selection. RWA tokenization is the practice of issuing blockchain tokens that represent treasuries, equities and other traditional financial instruments, and on-chain data from RWA.xyz put tradable tokenized assets registered on the Solana (SOL) network at $4.4 billion as of October 14. The same record shows tokenized-asset holders on the network grew 47% over the trailing 30 days to reach 897,897. Whatever the Solana price does in any given week, the analyst's case treats that adoption curve, not the chart, as the demand floor beneath the token. The network is pursuing the tokenization market for government bonds and equities specifically, leaning on fast transaction processing and low fees, and the assessment frames rising network utilization as the mechanism that feeds fee revenue back to long-term holders. Among the four altcoin selections, it is the only one whose growth claim arrives with a holder count attached.

Staking Yield and the Alpenglow Test

The supporting details run to mechanics rather than sentiment. Staking, the practice of locking tokens to help secure a proof-of-stake network for yield, currently pays about 4.9% a year on Solana (SOL), a return that compounds for patient holders while the tokenization thesis matures. The larger swing factor is the Alpenglow upgrade, still in its testing stage, which is designed to shorten transaction finality times. The assessment positions it as the piece of infrastructure most likely to widen institutional use of the chain, since financial firms generally want settlement certainty before moving serious volume on-chain. The other three picks rest on similar fee-and-supply arithmetic. NEAR Protocol's Intents service, which lets users and AI agents swap assets across different blockchains through competing market makers, processed $4.8 billion in exchanges and generated $8.2 million in fees in the 30 days to October 14, revenue that goes toward repurchasing NEAR; a proposal to cut new issuance from 2.5% a year to 1.6% over two years would slow circulating supply growth further, though the vote has no scheduled date. Zcash caps total issuance at 21 million coins, hides sender, recipient and amount behind optional privacy, and held about 29% of its supply in its shielded pool as of October 14, with its next halving expected on November 23, 2028. Hyperliquid, a decentralized futures trading venue, directs roughly 99% of its fees into token buybacks, $224 million of them in the third quarter of 2026, an annualized pace of $694 million equal to about 3.9% of its $17.8 billion market capitalization. Our earlier reporting on the same theme found Solana (SOL) Apps Booked $193.1 Million in 30-Day Revenue, Nearly Double Hyperliquid over the comparable window, and separately tracked how NEAR jumped 14% after the Sunrise integration opened Solana trading.

The On-Chain Test

The load-bearing document in this selection is the RWA.xyz record itself, and that is where the thesis will be settled: $4.4 billion in tokenized assets and 897,897 holders are verifiable on-chain figures, unlike most five-year calls in this market. The bull case is arithmetic. If holder growth stays anywhere near its recent 47% pace and tokenized treasuries and equities keep migrating to fast, cheap chains, fee revenue from the network's dApp activity scales with usage, and the 4.9% staking yield stacks on top of it. The risk is execution. Alpenglow is still in testing, so a hold priced at today's adoption curve assumes the upgrade actually ships and lands with institutions. For scale on the destination, a 10x by 2030 would require a $607 billion market cap, which is the arithmetic gap between the current tokenization base and the 2031 horizon this call is betting on.