Solana slips below $90 as Agave 4.4.1 becomes mandatory for validators

Solana trades at $89.62 on Friday morning, just over 7 percent lower than 24 hours earlier. A technical deadline also expires today. Anza, the development team behind the Agave validator client, requires every mainnet validator to run Agave 4.4.1 before epoch 1079 begins. The switch is expected at around 14:30 German time. If you hold SOL on an exchange, you do not need to do anything. If you have delegated SOL to a validator yourself, check after the switch whether that validator is still earning rewards.

The two events are not causally linked. The price drop follows a broad sell-off across the crypto market, while the upgrade is routine network maintenance. Together, though, they decide how calm Friday turns out for Solana holders.

Solana price on Friday: $89.62 and the lowest daily close since August

According to CoinGecko, SOL traded between $96.85 and $88.35 over the past 24 hours, a range of 8.8 percent. It is down 7.8 percent on the week and 24.4 percent over 30 days. In euro terms one SOL costs about €80. Market capitalisation stands at $52.9 billion, which makes Solana the seventh-largest cryptocurrency.

Thursday's daily close was $89.23. Solana last closed lower on August 21, at $87.65. That leaves the price roughly 69 percent below its all-time high of $293.31, set on January 19, 2025. cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on November 6, 2026, based on CoinGecko daily closing prices for the past 365 days.

Agave 4.4.1: why Anza is making the upgrade mandatory before epoch 1079

Anza asked validators on November 5 to move to Agave 4.4.1 immediately. As Crypto Briefing reports, epoch 1079 is expected to start at around 13:30 UTC on November 6. According to the report, validators running older software then risk being forked off the network. Such validators would no longer take part in consensus and would stop earning rewards.

Agave is the most widely used software for running a Solana validator. A validator is a machine that checks transactions, confirms blocks and posts staked SOL as collateral in return. An epoch is the Solana blockchain's accounting period: at its boundary the network resets voting weights and distributes staking rewards.

The release page on GitHub has listed version 4.4.1 as a stable release recommended for general use since November 5. According to Crypto Briefing, the second major client, Firedancer, meets the new requirements from version 26.10.6. Anza had only cleared the previous version, 4.4.0, for general use on October 30, after a staged rollout in which the share of stake on the new version rose from 10 to 20 percent.

ProgramData and Loader-v3: a minimum size for program accounts

In the release notes, the key change appears as "apply ProgramData size floor during account loading". It sets a minimum size for ProgramData accounts when the network loads them to execute a transaction. ProgramData accounts hold the compiled code of programs deployed on Solana through the upgradeable Loader-v3. Almost every major application on Solana, from exchanges to lending protocols, uses this route.

Why the floor matters: Solana limits how much data a single transaction may load. If different validators count the size of a program account differently, two validators can assess the same transaction differently. In a network with shared consensus, that must not happen. According to Crypto Briefing, the patch is needed to keep validators compatible with an upcoming feature activation, a so-called feature gate. The report does not say which feature will be activated.

Fork instead of consensus: which validators drop out from 14:30

All mainnet validators that run neither Agave 4.4.1 nor the matching Firedancer version when epoch 1079 begins are affected. Such a machine technically keeps running, but follows its own, diverging view of the blockchain. For the rest of the network, its vote no longer counts.

For the network as a whole this is not an outage, as long as the large majority of stake upgrades in time. Solana needs a supermajority of staked weight to confirm blocks. If only a small group falls behind, transactions continue normally. Neither Anza nor the specialist press has put a figure on the share of validators that had upgraded by Friday morning.

Whether individual exchanges briefly pause SOL deposits and withdrawals around the switch is up to each provider. Exchanges usually announce such pauses on their status page or in the app.

Solana staking: delegated SOL stay safe, rewards depend on the validator

If you delegate SOL to a validator from your own wallet, you keep control of your coins. Delegated SOL remain in your own stake account, and the validator cannot move them. If your validator misses the upgrade, you do not lose coins, but you earn no or fewer rewards for as long as it is excluded.

Public overviews such as Solana explorers and validator lists show which software version a validator runs. If an older version is still listed after the switch, moving to another validator is an option. Bear in mind that unstaking only takes effect at the next epoch boundary, so a move costs time during which no rewards accrue.

If you stake through an exchange or a liquid staking provider, you do not need to worry about the version; the provider chooses the validators. The box at the top of this article compares which platforms offer which terms.

Crypto market sell-off: chip stocks and Bitcoin drag Solana lower

Solana's decline is part of a broad slide. According to CoinGecko, Bitcoin lost about 6 percent in 24 hours, Ether almost 8 percent and XRP nearly 10 percent. The move was triggered on Thursday by a sell-off in chip and technology stocks on Wall Street, as cryptoticker.io described on Friday morning in its Bitcoin price report ahead of the US jobs report. The jobs report is due today at 14:30 German time, almost exactly when epoch 1079 begins.

In phases like this, Solana usually falls harder than Bitcoin, because a larger share of its trading runs on leveraged futures markets and investors sell riskier coins first. Over the month, SOL is down 24.4 percent, far more than the market as a whole.

Solana price levels: 200-day line at $88.96, resistance at $98.89

On the downside, the first level sits just below the current price. The 200-day line, the average of daily closes over the past 200 days, runs at $88.96. Just below are the 24-hour low at $88.35 and the August low at $87.65. If Solana closes below this zone, there are few daily closes where buyers recently stepped in until the year's low of $62.18 from June 7.

On the upside, the 24-hour high at $96.85 is the first hurdle, followed by the 100-day line at $98.89 and the round $100 mark. The 50-day line is far higher at $108.39; Solana last hit its monthly high of $111.25 on October 12. cryptoticker.io also calculated these averages itself on November 6, 2026, from CoinGecko daily closing prices.

Leverage and liquidation: an 8.8 percent daily range is enough at 10x

With leverage you trade a multiple of your stake. A liquidation is the forced closure of your position by the exchange once the posted collateral no longer covers the losses. At 10x leverage a drop of just under 10 percent is enough, and depending on the exchange slightly less because of the maintenance margin. The 8.8 percent range of the past 24 hours came close to that threshold.

Around dates such as the start of an epoch with a mandatory upgrade and the US jobs report, prices often swing more than usual. If you trade with leverage, do not place your stop right at a widely watched level such as the 200-day line, where stops cluster, and work out the liquidation price before opening the position.

Crypto tax in Germany: the one-year holding period also applies to staked SOL

If you sell SOL at a loss because the price is falling, check the purchase date. Under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act (EStG), gains from selling privately held cryptocurrencies are tax-free after a holding period of more than one year; below that, an annual exemption limit of €1,000 applies. Losses from sales within the holding period can be offset against gains from such private disposals.

According to the German Finance Ministry's letter of May 10, 2022, staking does not extend the holding period to ten years. The rewards themselves are taxed on receipt as other income under Section 22 No. 3 EStG, with an annual exemption limit of €256. That is the position today; whether lawmakers will change the rules for cryptocurrencies is politically open.

Buying Solana with a MiCA licence: purchase route and custody

If you want to buy after the decline, an exchange licensed under the EU's crypto regulation MiCA is the best choice in Germany. MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) is the EU rulebook that requires crypto service providers to hold a licence, maintain capital and keep client assets segregated. The comparison of regulated crypto exchanges shows which providers already hold the licence.

For larger holdings, self-custody remains the safer choice. A hardware wallet keeps the private key offline, and you can delegate SOL to a validator from there too. The Agave upgrade changes nothing about your wallet: addresses, balances and existing delegations stay as they are.

Solana upgrade: from epoch 1079 only Agave 4.4.1 counts

For most investors, Friday is above all a price day, not a tech day. Three steps help you keep an eye on both:

1. Check your staking: If you delegated SOL yourself, check your validator's software version after 14:30; terms from other providers are in the staking comparison.
2. Secure your custody: Larger SOL holdings should not sit on an exchange permanently; suitable devices are listed in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Choose how to buy: If you want to add to your position, look at fees and licensing; the crypto exchange comparison gives an overview.

Below $88.35 the zone around the 200-day line would be broken; above $98.89 Solana would have reclaimed its 100-day line. Until then, the price depends on the wider market, not on the upgrade.

(As of November 6, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)