Analysts split on SOL

Solana’s price debate widened in April after one bank cut its near-term target while another firm’s older bull case kept circulating at far higher levels. (forbes.com) Standard Chartered’s digital-assets head Geoff Kendrick set a $250 target for Solana by the end of 2026, according to a Forbes report published April 9, 2026. The report tied that view to new payments work on Solana involving Mastercard, Worldpay and Western Union after the Solana Foundation launched its Solana Developer Platform on March 24. (forbes.com) The much bigger number comes from VanEck, but it is not a fresh 2026 call. In an October 26, 2023 note, VanEck laid out a 2030 bull case of $3,211.28 for Solana, alongside a base case of $335 and a bear case of $9.81. (vaneck.com) That gap reflects two different exercises: one is a nearer-term market target, the other is a long-range scenario model. VanEck’s 2030 framework assumed Solana could win share in sectors including payments, decentralized finance and consumer apps. (vaneck.com) The SoFi claim also needs narrowing. SoFi said on April 2, 2026 that its new Big Business Banking platform is “expected to leverage Solana, alongside other blockchain networks,” not that the whole platform is being built only on Solana. (investors.sofi.com) SoFi’s own disclosures describe a broader stack. The company said its business platform lets enterprise clients manage fiat and crypto banking from a nationally chartered bank, and its SoFiUSD stablecoin page says the token is currently available on Ethereum. (investors.sofi.com) (sofi.com) The payments angle is central to the bullish case around Solana. Solana’s own payments documentation says the network processed more than $1 trillion in stablecoin volume in 2025, with median transaction fees around $0.001 and confirmation in roughly 400 milliseconds. (solana.com) The market is still pricing Solana far below both headline targets. CoinGecko data for April 14, 2026 showed Solana with a market value of about $49.8 billion, after closing at $86.60 on April 13. (coingecko.com) So the split is less about whether Solana is being used and more about how much that usage is worth, and on what timeline. The verified numbers point to a $250 end-of-2026 bank target, a $3,211.28 2030 bull-case scenario from 2023, and a SoFi rollout that includes Solana but is not limited to it. (forbes.com) (vaneck.com) (investors.sofi.com)