Bank of America digital asset strategist Alkesh Shah has predicted that Ethereum competitor Solana could become the “Visa of the digital asset ecosystem” in a Jan 11 research note. The Solana network launched in 2020, and has since grown into the fifth largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $47 billion. An order of magnitude faster than Ethereum, it has been used to settle over 50 billion transactions and mint over 5.7 million non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Critics however argue its speed comes at the cost of decentralization and reliability but Shah thinks the benefits outweigh the drawbacks: “Its ability to provide high throughput, low cost and ease of use creates a blockchain optimized for consumer use cases like micropayments, DeFi, NFTs, decentralized networks (Web3...