Solana has indeed had many highlights in technological iteration and ecosystem development over the past two years, but reaching the $500 mark still faces many hurdles. Today, let's discuss the potential roadblocks that might appear on the path to 2026.

When it comes to Solana, the most commonly criticized aspect is network stability. Past outages still cast a shadow over investors' minds. Especially during the Meme coin craze last year, network congestion and transaction lagging occurred from time to time, which is somewhat embarrassing for a public chain that claims to be "high-performance."

Firedancer, this new validation client, sounds promising and claims to significantly improve network stability, but its actual effectiveness remains to be seen over time. If serious technical failures or security issues emerge later, the price of SOL will definitely take a hit. The technical performance in December 2025 will reveal some clues—SOL barely holding at the $122 support level, but the upward pressure has not been fully released, indicating that the market still lacks confidence in Solana's technical fundamentals.

There is also a deeper issue worth pondering. Solana has made decentralization compromises for performance, with validator entry barriers as high as 45,000 SOL. This highly centralized structure is a hidden risk in the long run. As people increasingly value true decentralization, this design could become a soft spot in Solana's trustworthiness among institutions. Can high performance and sufficient decentralization be achieved simultaneously? Solana has yet to fully answer this question.