A Solana (SOL) whale has emerged with over $153 million in unrealized profits after staking nearly a million tokens back in 2021. A recent blockchain analytics report identifies a wallet accommodating the best-ever staking outcome from Solana to exist today.

Lookonchain states this trader started staking about 1 million SOL tokens when they bought the tokens at $27, making their initial stake worth about $27 million.

Since taking 1 million SOL for token staking in 2021, the user now owns 1.29 million SOL tokens from rewards and compounding. At its current price of $140 per Solana token, the whale now controls more than $180 million after making this investment.

Solana Whale Gains $153M After Four-Year Staking Plan

Solana Overtakes Ethereum in Staking Market Cap

Whale activities showed on April 22 include a movement of unstaking 100,000 SOL tokens valued at $14 million followed by sending them to the Binance exchange with a common sell signal.

Although the address sold tokens out of the 1.19 million SOL they own, it retains a substantial SOL amount worth $166 million. The trader took advantage of early Solana market conditions to earn $153 million through their investment strategy starting from the $27 million base.

The large stakeholder action now joins another notable event, which took place last month. Bitcoin staking analysis firm Arkham Intelligence observed large SOL release events from four wallets that put $37 million in SOL to stake in 2021 on April 4. When the tokens were unlocked, they had a value over $206 million and users offloaded $50 million shortly after.

Institutional investors now favor Solana as a staking platform more than ever before. The April 20 market data showed Solana briefly becoming more valuable for staking than Ethereum with $53 billion market capitalization. When Solana briefly achieved higher market capitalization than Ethereum, people in the crypto space began discussing how this change would impact the industry.

Some people see Solana’s market value increase as proof that more users are joining and using their network, but others express concerns that quick growth might lead to market instability and centralization problems.