SOL

Solana

Layer 1

The busiest trading chain in crypto, about to get a new consensus, but its token still pays far more in issuance than it earns.

Strong network, weak token v1.2 · as of 2026-10-20 · framework v1.13 Coinsight · all analyses
Bottom line

Solana is still where most onchain trading happens: $197.2B of spot DEX volume in Q3 2026, a record ~$17.3B in stablecoins and ~$1.6B in US spot ETFs. The token has not kept up: −44% over a year, −64% from the January 2025 ATH, and network fee revenue (REV) of ~$308M over four quarters against roughly $2.6B of new SOL issued. Alpenglow (activating 21 Oct) and the passed double-disinflation vote are the two changes that could narrow that gap.

Scorecard (1–5)
Project
Token performance
Tokenomics
Price
$106.88
+1.7% 24h · −3% 30d · CoinGecko 20 Oct
Market cap
$63.0B
rank #7 · FDV $68.0B, no max supply
24h volume
$2.71B
4.3% of market cap
From ATH
−64%
ATH $293.31, Jan 2025
2026 YTD
−14%
$124.52 → $106.88
Staked
427M SOL
about two-thirds of supply · Blockworks, end Q2 2026

The last 12 months

$50$100$150$200$250Oct 25NovDecJan 26FebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNov2025-10-27: $200.0216$200.02 peak2026-06-07: $62.1792$62.18 low2026-09-26: $122.081$122.082026-10-20: $106.8781$106.881First US spot SOL ETF2Firedancer live on mainnet3Slide to $784Constellation design5Year low at $62.186Double disinflation passes7Stablecoins hit ~$17.3B8Q3 REV +48% to $75.7M9Alpenglow activates10Disinflation gate scheduled
MarketTechGovernanceAdoptionUpcoming

Daily closes from CoinGecko, 21 Oct 2025 to 20 Oct 2026. Intraday wicks do not show.

Key events
  1. 1
    28 Oct 25 First US spot SOL ETF. Bitwise's staking ETF BSOL lists; Grayscale, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley and others follow, reaching ~$1.6B in net assets by October 2026.
  2. 2
    12 Dec 25 Firedancer live on mainnet. Jump's independent validator client goes live; it secures ~15% of stake by mid-October 2026.
  3. 3
    06 Feb 26 Slide to $78. SOL falls from $117 at the end of January to a $78.40 close in a week and stays below $100 until late August.
  4. 4
    25 Mar 26 Constellation design. Anza publishes its multiple-concurrent-proposer design to end the single-leader monopoly on transaction ordering.
  5. 5
    07 Jun 26 Year low at $62.18. Whale selling and broken supports push SOL to its 12-month low; it rebounds 10% within a week.
  6. 6
    28 Aug 26 Double disinflation passes. SGP-0002 wins 67.00% of the stake vote (66.67% needed), doubling the annual disinflation rate to 30%.
  7. 7
    25 Sep 26 Stablecoins hit ~$17.3B. Record stablecoin supply on Solana, third among chains; holders pass 14M in early October.
  8. 8
    15 Oct 26 Q3 REV +48% to $75.7M. First quarterly rise in network fee revenue since Q4 2024; app revenue $299.1M.
  9. 9
    21 Oct 26 Alpenglow activates. Epoch 1064: TowerBFT is replaced by Votor after 5,000 slots, targeting ~150 ms finality; Rotor comes later.
  10. 10
    Soon Disinflation gate scheduled. Double disinflation needs Agave v4.4 and a feature-gate epoch; no public date yet.

How a token swap flows through Solana

User
Signs a swap in a wallet

E.g. USDC into a memecoin through a DEX aggregator; adds an optional priority fee or Jito tip.

RPC / Jito
Forwards to the leader

Tips buy a place in a Jito bundle; plain transactions go straight to the current block producer.

Leader validator
Executes in parallel

Non-overlapping transactions run at the same time; base fee charged in SOL.

DEX program
Runs the trade

AMM or launchpad (Raydium, Orca, Pump.fun) takes its own fee: this is app revenue, not REV.

Validators
Vote and finalize

Today ~12.8 s to finality; Alpenglow targets ~150 ms and takes votes out of ordinary transactions.

User
Receives the tokens

Settled onchain; the wallet shows the new balance.

Where SOL comes in: every transaction pays a base fee in SOL (half burned) and priority fees and Jito tips paid in SOL go to validators and stakers. That is REV. Stakers also receive newly minted SOL, which is far larger than REV, and the trade itself can bypass SOL entirely (USDC in, memecoin out).

Usage and adoption

USD, 12 months (Q4 2025 to Q3 2026)
Network fees + tips (REV)
~$308M
New SOL issued (inflation)
~$2.6B

REV = base fees + priority fees + Jito tips: ~$91M (Q4 2025), $89.8M (Q1), $51.0M (Q2), $75.7M (Q3), from Blockworks and Cnyes. Issuance: stakers earned ~$630M (Q1) and $487M (Q2), over 97% of it issuance; Q3 and Q4 2025 are our estimate of ~6M SOL a quarter times the average CoinGecko price (Q4 needs an assumed ~$190 for 1–20 Oct 2025). So paid usage covered only ~12% of new supply; fee burn is a small part of REV.

  • strong signal
    Network REV (Q3)
    $75.7M

    Blockworks, +48% QoQ after $51.0M in Q2. Fees and tips that users pay to the chain; the cleanest value signal.

  • strong signal
    App revenue (Q3)
    $299.1M

    Fees kept by apps (launchpads, DEXs, wallets). Pump.fun was ~40% of August app revenue. Real demand, but most of it does not reach SOL holders.

  • strong signal
    Stablecoin supply
    ~$15–17B

    Record ~$17.3B on 25 Sep, eased since; 14M+ holders (7 Oct). Third-largest chain by stablecoins.

  • medium signal
    US spot ETFs
    $1.63B

    Net assets 19 Oct, ~2.6% of market cap; $1.55B cumulative inflows, but outflows in October.

  • medium signal
    Spot DEX volume (Q3)
    $197.2B

    36% of cross-chain spot volume. Includes memecoin churn and bots; memecoins were 12–29% of DEX volume in mid-2026.

Solana has real paid usage: trading apps earned ~$300M in Q3 and stablecoins keep growing. But what reaches the chain itself (REV) is about a tenth of the value printed as new SOL, so holders depend on the disinflation cut and on fee revenue recovering toward 2025 levels.

Project

What it is
A high-throughput layer-1 (mainnet since 2020) that runs smart contracts in parallel on one global state, with fees of a fraction of a cent. It is the main venue for memecoins, onchain spot trading and a fast-growing share of stablecoin payments.
Team
Founded by Anatoly Yakovenko (Solana Labs). Core client work is now spread over Anza (Agave client), Jump Crypto (Firedancer) and others; the Solana Foundation funds the ecosystem and runs governance tooling.
Technology
Parallel execution, a single fast chain instead of rollups. A second independent client, Firedancer, has been live since 12 Dec 2025 and secures ~15% of stake. Alpenglow replaces TowerBFT on 21 Oct 2026 with a target finality of ~150 ms (from ~12.8 s).
Traction
Q3 2026: spot DEX volume $197.2B (36% of all chains), app revenue $299.1M (+48% QoQ), tokenized stock trading a record $7.1B. Stablecoin supply hit ~$17.3B on 25 Sep. Pump.fun regained the lead among memecoin launchpads in September.
Competitors
Ethereum and its L2s (Base above all) for apps and stablecoins; Hyperliquid for onchain trading; BNB Chain for retail memecoin flow; Sui and other fast L1s.
Key risks
Fee revenue is cyclical and tied to memecoin trading; issuance still dwarfs REV; Alpenglow is the biggest consensus change in the chain's history and Firedancer cannot run during its migration window; ETF flows turned negative in October.
Roadmap
Alpenglow activation at epoch 1064 (21 Oct), with the Rotor block-propagation part still undated. Double disinflation (SGP-0002) passed but waits for Agave v4.4 and a feature-gate epoch. Anza promised a first multiple-concurrent-proposer (Constellation) version in 2026; no mainnet date yet.

Token performance

1-year return (21 Oct 2025 → 20 Oct 2026, CoinGecko)
SOL
-44%
BTC
-25%
ETH
-38%

SOL fell more than BTC and ETH over 12 months. Over 3 years it is still up about +270% (from ~$28 in Oct 2023), ahead of BTC (~+179%, from ~$29.7k) and ETH (~+53%, from ~$1.6k). 3-year figures are manual and approximate because the free CoinGecko API covers 365 days.

Range 2026
$62.18 low (7 Jun) to $146.51 high (15 Jan), daily closes; now $106.88
12-month drawdown
−69%, from $200.02 (27 Oct 2025) to $62.18 (7 Jun 2026); +96% off the low since, peaking at $122.08 (26 Sep)
Liquidity
$2.71B traded in 24h, 4.3% of market cap; rank #7
Flows
US spot ETFs: first weekly outflow (~−$25M, 5–9 Oct) after 14 straight inflow weeks; −$6.72M on 19 Oct; net assets $1.63B
ATH check ATH check passed. The $293.31 high (19 Jan 2025) came more than four years after launch and is also the current-cycle high, so it is used as the reference.

Tokenomics

Supply
636.2M SOL total, 589.5M circulating (CoinGecko), no maximum supply.
Inflation
~3.8% a year (Q2 2026), falling 15% a year toward a 1.5% floor. SGP-0002 (passed 28 Aug with 67.00%) doubles that to 30% a year, reaching 1.5% around 2029 and issuing ~18.9M fewer SOL over six years; not yet activated.
Unlocks/vesting
No large investor or team cliffs remain. New float comes mainly from staking rewards, roughly 6M SOL a quarter on our estimate.
Utility
Transaction and priority fees, staking (security and voting), collateral across DeFi. Alpenglow moves validator votes out of ordinary transactions.
Distribution
About two-thirds of supply is staked (427M SOL, end Q2). Over 98% of staker income is issuance, so non-stakers are diluted by about the inflation rate.
Sinks
Half of base fees are burned (small next to issuance); a fee-burn proposal, SGP-0003, fell short in August. US spot ETFs hold ~$1.63B; several listed treasury companies stake SOL.

Bull case

Alpenglow lands cleanly and faster finality pulls more trading, payments and tokenized stocks onto Solana; double disinflation activates in early 2027 and REV keeps rising from the $75.7M Q3 level. ETF inflows resume and SOL reclaims the $122 September high on the way to $146 (2026 high).

Bear case

An Alpenglow bug or a fee slump when memecoin activity fades keeps REV near $50M a quarter while issuance continues at ~6M SOL a quarter. ETF outflows persist, SOL loses $100 and retests the $62 June low.

Watch before the next re-run

  • Alpenglow after 21 Oct: stalls, finality, Firedancer rejoining
  • Activation epoch for double disinflation (Agave v4.4)
  • Quarterly REV vs issuance in USD (Q3: $75.7M vs ~$0.5B)
  • Weekly ETF flows, $100 support and the $122 Sep high

Where to trade

Krakenlisted

SOL against EUR · USD · USDT · USDC · AUD · BTC · CAD · ETH · EURC · GBP · SOFID · USD1

24h $37.6M · ±2% depth $10.0M

OKXlisted

SOL against EUR · USDT · USDC · AED · AUD · BRL · BTC · TRY

24h $61.2M · ±2% depth $5.81M

Largest exchanges

Exchange24h vol±2% depth
BinanceSOL/USDT$203.7M$13.5M
GateSOL/USDT$82.0M$7.71M
CoinbaseSOL/USD$61.5M$8.33M
MEXCSOL/USDT$61.4M$8.89M
OKXSOL/USDT$54.3M$5.67M

Deepest DEX pools

Pool24h vol±2% depth
ManifestSOL/other · Solana$298.2k$1.22M
OrcaCLSOL/USDC · Solana$115.9M$1.20M
RaydiumSOL/USDC · Solana$3.56M$797.6k

Pool size (TVL), fee tier and fee APR are not in yet: they need DefiLlama, which this setup cannot reach so far. CL = concentrated liquidity (higher fees, more impermanent-loss risk).

On-chain share of all SOL volume: 13.9%.

As of 21 Oct 2026 · CoinGecko tickers (24h volume, ±2% depth). ±2% depth is the money it takes to move the price 2% either way: the real size of a market. Exchanges ranked by volume among well-known venues; pools by depth. Not investment advice.

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