Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

solana coin

Circle has reportedly minted approximately 4 billion USDC on the Solana blockchain over the past week, according to data shared by @SolanaFloor. This development adds to the existing supply of USDC on Solana, a chain where the stablecoin is natively issued as an SPL token. While this mint does not directly translate to an increase in circulating supply or exchange balances, it is a significant addition to Solana’s blockchain activities, where it already holds a substantial amount of USDC. This minting activity may suggest increased demand or strategic adjustments by Circle within the Solana ecosystem.

Key Takeaways The minting of 4 billion USDC on Solana suggests increased activity on the blockchain, potentially indicating a rise in demand for the stablecoin. Market participants appear to view this development as consistent with scenarios where Solana’s price could experience upward movement, reflected in the moderate expected price impact. Despite the mint, the overall USDC circulation on Solana may not necessarily increase, pointing to strategic considerations rather than a direct boost to liquidity. What to Watch Observers should monitor any further announcements from Circle regarding their strategic intentions for USDC on Solana. Key actors like Solana Labs and the Solana Foundation may provide insights into how this development aligns with broader adoption and technological advancements. Additionally, regulatory shifts or institutional endorsements could influence the market’s perception of Solana’s price trajectory in the coming days.

Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.8% — — View market → November 1 2026 13% — — View market → November 1 2026 3.6% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.2% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.6% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.2% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.4% — — View market → November 1 2026 1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 1.7% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.9% — — View market →

Summary
The Akash core team has selected Solana as the next home for Akash Network. We propose to leave Akash’s sovereign Cosmos chain, akashnet-2, and rebuild the marketplace as native programs on Solana mainnet. AKT becomes a native Solana token, and nothing changes for live workloads until cutover. Cutover has no date yet: a separate governance vote sets it only after audits and migration rehearsals pass. Workloads then keep running for 90 days after cutover while tenants redeploy.

We selected Solana for four reasons:

Akash stops paying for a chain it does not use. About 100 validators bond AKT only to secure consensus, and the core team maintains its own forks of cosmos-sdk, CometBFT and gogoproto. On Solana, security is inherited by every program, with no bonding, slot auction or SOL stake. Network fees for the whole marketplace come to about 0.075 SOL a day, a few dollars.
Headroom at near-zero cost. A median Solana transaction costs about $0.001. Akash’s roughly 15,000 marketplace transactions a day are a rounding error next to Solana’s 112M daily user transactions, even at 100 times today’s load.
DePIN already lives there. Helium, Render, io.net, Hivemapper and Nosana settle on Solana. Helium’s 2023 move off its own chain and Render’s token move give Akash a proven migration playbook.
Liquidity and users. Solana ranks first in weekly DEX volume, carries $15B in stablecoins and sees about 2.2M daily fee payers. Meanwhile the Cosmos ecosystem is consolidating, and Noble, its stablecoin chain, left in March 2026.

AKT moves first. Two weeks after the migration proposal passes, and only once two independent audits have passed, the core team launches AKT as an SPL token on Solana and a one-way migration portal opens for 2 years. The marketplace follows later, once audits and rehearsals pass. Tenants keep their SDL files and live leases, and providers upgrade one daemon and re-register.

Akash also gives something up: sovereign consensus, validator income, native IBC and the “own chain” story. This report sets out those costs plainly next to the gains.

Nothing moves yet. After publishing this report, we will submit a migration proposal on akashnet-2. The marketplace cutover then needs at least two more votes: a cutover proposal and a sunset upgrade.

Why leave Akash’s own chain
Akash pays the full cost of a sovereign chain without using any of its powers. A survey of the codebase found nothing in the marketplace that needs its own consensus: no custom transaction handling, no vote extensions and no per-block sweeps, since escrow settles lazily.

That cost shows up in five places:

Locked capital. A large share of AKT is bonded to validators only to secure consensus. That capital does nothing for tenants or providers. On a shared chain it can fund provider incentives, liquidity and growth.
Engineering drag. The core team maintains forks of cosmos-sdk, CometBFT and gogoproto, a custom upgrade system with 16 upgrades behind it, and validator coordination for every release. It also runs a whole CosmWasm subsystem whose only production job is importing Pyth prices.
Scale. Orders, bids, lease settlements and token swaps are chatty. The chain must absorb 10 to 100 times today’s activity at fees that round to zero against lease value.
Distribution. Wallets, stablecoins, DeFi and retail attention are elsewhere. In 2025 and 2026 Kujira, Comdex, Picasso, Quasar and Evmos wound down, Neutron left Interchain Security, and Noble left for its own EVM chain on 2026-03-18.
Talent. The pools of Rust and Solidity developers dwarf the Cosmos SDK pool, so contributing to Akash gets easier on either target.

Sovereignty does work for some apps. dYdX runs well as a Cosmos appchain because its order book needs custom block processing. Akash’s marketplace does not, and that asymmetry is the case for leaving.

How we decided
We ran an open request for proposals. When the evidence showed that shared security alone would not fix the problem, we widened it.

Dec 15, 2025: AEP-79 opens. Akash asked established L1s to become its shared-security provider. Proposals were judged on five goals: lower the AKT staking burden, cut operational overhead, preserve decentralization, scale at predictable cost, and keep interoperability.
Mid-2026: the Solana Foundation responds. Its plan redeploys the marketplace as native Solana programs.
Aug 10, 2026: the Chain Migration Program. Overclock Labs published a 15-document plan that specifies both a Solana path and an EVM L2 path to execution depth. It weighed seven options against 15 hard requirements.
Selection: Solana. The core team has selected Solana. After publishing this report, we will submit a migration proposal on akashnet-2. Gate 0, the plan’s first go/no-go checkpoint, closes if it passes with 33.4% quorum and a majority voting yes, and the core team records the choice. A failed proposal sends the program back to option analysis.

The requirements were concrete, not a matter of taste. Every candidate had to show at least 50 marketplace transactions a second sustained and 500 in bursts. It also needed a median cost of $0.01 or less, production Pyth price feeds and a deep native stablecoin. Other bars included support from the top 10 AKT trading venues, 99.5% liveness over 24 months, confirmation within 5 seconds, gasless onboarding, and a comparable protocol that had already migrated there at scale.

The choice was also built to be falsifiable. Six evidence items could have flipped the choice. Four of them would have moved it to the EVM path:

Exchanges covering 80% of AKT volume rejecting Solana’s Token-2022 standard, with no good fallback.
Solana’s Alpenglow consensus upgrade turning visibly unstable.
Two or more top-5 AKT venues supporting an EVM swap but not a Solana one.
Provider software taking over 50% more effort to integrate on Solana than on EVM.

How the options compared
Seven options were on the table, and two cleared every hard requirement: Solana mainnet and an existing EVM L2.

OptionOutcomeDeciding factorSolana mainnetSelectedHome of DePIN, runtime fits the marketplace, most fee headroomExisting EVM L2FinalistDeepest EVM talent and tooling, but single commercial sequencers, policy churn and no DePIN clusterDedicated Arbitrum Orbit rollupHeld as fallbackBrings back the chain-running burden Akash is leavingEthereum L1RejectedGas still spikes to 5 to 40 gwei under load; a live marketplace cannot price off calm daysSVM L2 (Eclipse, Termina class)Future optionYoung, brings back operations work, lacks mainnet’s distributionStay on Cosmos with shared securitySupersededEases staking cost, barely touches overhead, does nothing for distributionStatus quoBaseline onlyAll four problems stay and compound
Our public plan specifies both finalists to the same depth, and the head-to-head below draws on it.

Solana mainnetExisting EVM L2Security comes fromSolana’s validators, about 770 to 800 block producersEthereum’s validator set, through a Stage 1 rollupSlashingNot live yet; SIMD-0212 is in governanceLive on EthereumWho orders transactionsThe validator set, on two production clientsA single sequencer run by a commercial operator, with forced inclusion as the escape hatchCost to place a bid, calmAbout $0.0008About $0.007Cost to close a deployment, elevated loadAbout $0.0014About $0.43Blocks and confirmationAbout 400 ms blocks, sub-second optimistic confirmation, about 12.8 s to full finalityAbout 200 ms preconfirmations on some L2s, about 13 min to Ethereum finalityOracle and token rulesPyth native; ACT non-transferable through Token-2022Pyth pull contracts; ACT restricted by contractGasless useFee-payer relayersERC-4337 paymastersCosmos linksNone native; Cosmos routes are thinningIBC Eureka to Ethereum, live since April 2025DePIN peers and precedentHelium, Render, io.net, Hivemapper; Helium’s 2023 chain sunsetNo DePIN clusterTalent and toolingRust and AnchorThe deepest engineering, audit and tooling marketExecution noveltyHigher: cranks, rent and account limitsLowest: claims, vesting and governance tooling are commodityDistribution2.2M daily fee payers, $15B in stablecoinsExchange-affiliated funnels and native stablecoins
Costs come from our own designs, assuming SOL at $150 and ETH at $1,917.

The EVM path wins on Ethereum’s security budget, live slashing, Cosmos links, talent and the lowest execution novelty. Solana wins on fit: cost under load, no single operator, a runtime that matches the marketplace, where Akash’s peers are, and how concrete the offer is. The next section explains why fit decided it.

Why we selected Solana
Fit decided it. Solana’s runtime fits our design, it is the cheapest home for a busy marketplace, no single company runs it, and Akash’s peers and buyers are already there.

The runtime fits our design

Native Pyth prices. The CosmWasm subsystem Akash runs only to import Pyth prices goes away.
Token-2022. ACT stays a non-transferable compute credit, enforced by the token standard itself.
Fee-payer relayers. Users can act without first buying SOL.
No chain to run. The design rule is “Solana mainnet only: no appchain, no sequencer, no bespoke oracle network.” We still run lightweight cranks and a fee relayer.

An EVM L2 can do most of this too, through Pyth contracts, restricted tokens and paymasters. On Solana it comes with the runtime.

It is the cheapest home for a busy marketplace
By our own designs, a marketplace operation costs about 9 times less on Solana on a calm day and about 300 times less under load, as the table above shows.

Capacity is not a concern either. Solana blocks now hold 100M compute units, and because each lease has its own account, Akash’s throughput scales with the whole block. Solana puts Akash’s network fees at about 0.075 SOL a day at today’s volume.

DePIN lives there, and so does the playbook
More than 50 DePIN projects, worth about $3.5B combined, settle on Solana: Helium, Render, io.net, Nosana and Hivemapper among them. Helium is the only network to retire its own L1 into another L1 at scale, in 2023, and it is healthy three years on. Render moved its token too.

Their playbooks are the ones our plan uses. Render moved its token to Solana through an upgrade portal, the closest model for ours, and Helium’s migration tooling is open for reuse. Akash follows a proven path into its own buyers’ and sellers’ ecosystem instead of pioneering into an empty one. io.net, with more than 100,000 GPUs, competes with Akash there, which also shows the demand is real.

Liquidity, users and institutional capital
As a native Solana token, AKT plugs straight into lending markets, liquid staking, collateral and aggregator routing through Jupiter, Orca and Raydium.

DEX volume: about $11.5B a week, first worldwide (May 2026).
Stablecoins: $15B in circulation, USDC about 56%. These are direct rails for paying for GPUs.
Users: about 2.2M daily fee payers and 167M monthly token-holding addresses.
Institutions: BlackRock’s BUIDL, Apollo’s ACRED and spot Solana ETFs are live. That institutional capital matters for financing GPU capacity on Akash.

No single operator
Solana has no sequencer. Two independent validator clients, Agave and Firedancer, run in production, and two more are in development. Every EVM L2 we considered runs a single sequencer operated by one company, whose commercial policies can change under Akash. For a protocol whose promise is decentralized cloud, both the dependency and how it looks matter.

Solana’s governance also shows real checks. In March 2025, SIMD-228 drew 74% of stake, by Solana’s count the largest turnout of any blockchain vote, and still failed at 61.4% against a 66.7% threshold. Economic changes there need broad consensus.

A concrete offer
The Solana Foundation answered with funding and audit support, a gas subsidy design and a phased plan.

What changes for you
If the proposals pass, the move happens in two steps. Token launch comes two weeks after the migration proposal passes, and only once two independent audits have passed: the core team launches AKT as an SPL token on Solana and a one-way migration portal opens for 2 years. Cutover comes later, once audits and rehearsals pass, when new deployments move to Solana. Halt follows 90 days after cutover, when the old chain stops.

Every migration is one-way. AKT moved to Solana cannot move back to Cosmos. For the marketplace, cutover is the point of no return.

AKT holders

In self-custody: use the migration portal. Connect your Cosmos wallet, choose your Solana address, and your AKT arrives 1:1 as SPL AKT.
On an exchange: exchanges move customer balances through the portal on their own schedule. Watch for your exchange’s notice.
In a Console-managed wallet: nothing to do. Your balance migrates automatically.
You have 2 years from launch. AKT keeps its ticker and its 6 decimals. AKT sent to the portal leaves circulation on Cosmos, so total supply does not change.
On Osmosis or another IBC chain: bring it back to akashnet-2 first, then use the portal.
No rush before cutover. Until then, AKT on Cosmos still pays for gas, staking and governance on the old chain.
Phishing is the top threat. There will be one official portal domain. Check the Solana address before you confirm.

Still being settled: how unvested AKT migrates, how AKT still on Cosmos at halt reaches the portal, and what happens to AKT not migrated within 2 years.

Stakers and delegators
To migrate staked AKT, unbond it first, which takes 21 days, then use the portal. Until cutover, staked AKT still secures the old chain, earns rewards and votes on the remaining proposals. Old-chain inflation, and with it staking rewards, ends at cutover. New mechanisms for staking will be announced prior to cutover.

Validators
The validator role, and its income, end at halt. Between cutover and halt the old chain still needs you.

After halt there is room for you as a provider, RPC operator, or crank runner on the new network. There are new income streams that are uniquely suited for validators will be announced prior to cutover.

Providers

Before cutover: run one daemon upgrade, re-register on Solana with collateral, and get re-audited. You can sign a link from your old address to keep your reputation.
Cutover to halt: run a daemon on each chain. Old-chain earnings are paid weekly in new AKT, on average about 7 days later and at most 11.
Close unfunded leases. Leases funded by top-ups made after cutover earn nothing on Solana.
Keep 100% of lease payments. There is no protocol take at launch.

Tenants

Your SDL files do not change. Live leases keep running until you close them or the old chain halts.
New deployments go to Solana. Console makes that the default before cutover. You can still top up, close and withdraw on the old chain.
Refunds of deposits made before cutover arrive as weekly payouts in new AKT. Top-ups made after cutover are not credited on Solana.
Notices come 30, 60 and 75 days after cutover, with a final warning at least 7 days before halt.

Builders and integrators

SDKs: @akashnetwork/chain-sdk v2 is a breaking release on @solana/kit that keeps the high-level API. A new Go module replaces the current one.
CLI v3: same command names without the tx and query prefixes, plus akash provider migrate and akash events tail.
APIs: the Console API /v2 uses Solana addresses; /v1 is frozen with old-chain data. Lists and history come from the indexer.
Wallets and explorers: Phantom, Solflare and Ledger are fully supported; Keplr and Leap remain only for migration and wind-down. Solscan and SolanaFM replace Mintscan, which ends at halt.
Integrations that hold AKT: SPL AKT exists from token launch, so wallets, DEXs and custodians can add it before the marketplace moves.

Risks and trade-offs
We believe the move is a trade up, but it is not free. The largest risks sit in the migration itself, not in Solana, and each has a named mitigation and a gate it must clear.

What Akash gives up

Control of consensus. Akash cannot change Solana’s block times or fee markets. Akash keeps control of its programs, upgrades, governance and fee policy.
Slashing and validator count. Economic slashing is not live on Solana yet; SIMD-0212 is still in governance. Validator count has fallen to about 770 to 800, a fair criticism. Client diversity, with Firedancer in production beside Agave, is the counterpoint.
Native IBC. Solana has no IBC, and Cosmos routes to Solana are thinning. Cosmos links after halt go through third-party bridges.
Some atomic steps. Closing a deployment and refunding losing bids now take follow-up transactions run by automated cranks, with closes targeted within 60 seconds. Funds stay safe in between. Very large multi-group SDLs may need more than one transaction.
Rent deposits. Each lease locks a refundable deposit of about 0.024 SOL, roughly $3.60 at $150 per SOL. A 10,000-lease marketplace holds about 450 SOL, and its dollar value moves with SOL’s price.
Gas fees in SOL. All leases will continue to be paid in ACT whereas Gas Fees will be in SOL. Paying gas fees in AKT needs a sponsorship relayer instead of working natively.
Akash validators’ role. About 100 operators lose a role and an income stream. We owe them a respectful wind-down.

What could go wrong
RiskWhy it mattersMitigationMigration portal exploitFor 2 years it controls minting of SPL AKTTwo independent audits before launch, formal checks of the mint logic, per-epoch mint caps, an automatic pause on any supply mismatch, top bug-bounty tierSupply mismatch between chainsSPL AKT minted must always equal AKT taken out on CosmosIndependent reconciliation of both chains; automatic pause on any mismatchOld chain thins as holders leaveUnbonding to migrate lowers the stake that secures the old chain and votes on the remaining proposalsStaking keeps earning rewards until cutover, and a validator continuity payout covers the wind-down. Further measures are still open.Escrow behaves differentlyTenants or providers could lose fundsRecorded akashnet-2 escrow history replayed against the new programs; 500+ test vectors; invariant fuzzingACT price manipulationThin AKT markets and a single Pyth feedKeep the collateral circuit breaker (warn at 95%, halt at 90%), spread and batching; add volume caps and staleness checksGovernance rejectionThe one risk that stops the programPublish this report first, then the migration proposal; the marketplace moves only after a cutover proposal passesProviders do not re-registerThin capacity on day oneOne-command re-registration, incentives, a paid testnet; 20+ providers, including the top 5 by GPU capacity, confirmed 7 days before cutoverValidators leave during wind-downSettlements and payouts stallContinuity payout funded before cutover; uptime pledges from two thirds of voting power as a cutover gateExchanges switch slowlyTwo versions of AKT trade side by side and liquidity splitsThe portal stays open 2 years so venues can switch on their own schedule; we coordinate with each venueFake migration portalsHolders lose fundsOne official portal domain; look-alike monitoring and takedowns from before launchAlpenglow lands in our windowSolana’s largest consensus upgrade may land inside our build windowNo cutover inside a stability buffer after activation; soak testsExchanges reject Token-2022Listings and custody slow downVenue survey; fallback to the classic SPL token standard, decided before token launch
How we keep it safe

Audits: two independent firms on the token and portal code before launch. Two more plus an economic review and a public audit contest on the marketplace, and a pentest of off-chain services. Every critical and high finding must be fixed and re-verified. Reports are published within 30 days.
Path to immutability: after a burn-in of 12 months by default and a governance vote, the portal and escrow core become immutable.
Testing: before cutover, a provider testnet of at least 6 weeks with 25+ independent operators, then a 14-day community dress rehearsal with zero blockers.

Timeline and next steps
Four on-chain proposals bracket the move: the migration proposal after this report, a cutover proposal once audits and rehearsals are done, a sunset upgrade 21 days before cutover and a halt upgrade 21 days before halt. The token launches two weeks after the migration proposal passes, and only once two independent audits have passed. Cutover has no date yet, because the cutover proposal sets it.

Migration roadmap

AKT moves first. The marketplace follows.

Phases and gates in order, not to scale. Cutover has no date yet.

01Report and migration proposalNow

Publish this report, then submit the migration proposal on akashnet-2.

Gate 0The migration proposal passes with 33.4% quorum and a majority voting yes.

02Token launch, two weeks laterOne-way

Only after two independent audits pass, AKT launches as an SPL token and the migration portal opens for 2 years.

03Design freeze

Lock the marketplace designs and the emissions model.

Gate 1Designs are frozen and the emissions model is ratified.

04Build

Solana programs, the indexer, Console and the provider daemon.

Gate 2The public testnet is live, the first audit round is under way and the first dry run has passed.

05Testnet and audits

A provider testnet of 6+ weeks, two audit rounds and load tests.

06Rehearsals and cutover proposal

A dress rehearsal runs on forked mainnet, and the cutover proposal sets the cutover height.

Gate 3The cutover proposal passes, audits are closed and the dress rehearsal has passed.

07CutoverPoint of no return

New deployments move to Solana. The old chain only settles existing leases.

Gate 4The marketplace is live with funded deployments and the first weekly payout is done.

08Wind-down, 90 days

Old leases keep running. Earnings and refunds are paid weekly in new AKT.

09Halt and close-out, 13 weeks

The final payout is made, the old chain halts and archives are published.

Gate 5The final payout is verified, the old chain is halted and archives are published.

The token moves first, and the portal stays open for 2 years while the marketplace phases run. Each gate must pass before the next phase starts. Until about 6 hours before cutover, governance or validators can still stop the marketplace cutover.

What happens next

This report. Read it beside the full plan in AEP-79 and raise questions in public.
Migration proposal on akashnet-2. It states plainly that staking rewards end at cutover and validator income at halt, that holders must move AKT through the one-way portal within 2 years, how live leases wind down, and that migration cannot be reversed. It needs 33.4% quorum and a majority voting yes.
Token launch, two weeks later. Only once two independent audits have passed, the core team launches AKT as an SPL token and the migration portal opens for 2 years.
Design freeze and build. Solana-specific marketplace work starts only after the migration proposal passes.
Cutover proposal. It fixes the sunset upgrade, how the cutover height is set and the 90-day wind-down.
Two final proposals. A sunset upgrade is submitted 21 days before cutover, and a halt upgrade 21 days before halt.

Lead times protect everyone downstream. IBC partners get 60 days’ notice before cutover, and provider re-registration opens 30 days before cutover.

FAQ
Is AKT being replaced by a new token? No. AKT moves 1:1 with the same ticker and 6 decimals. ACT stays a non-transferable compute credit.

Do I need SOL? Not to migrate; a fee-payer relayer covers Solana fees for holders who migrate. Day to day, Gas fees are paid in SOL, but Console and the relayer can cover them for you.

Is the migration portal a bridge? No. It runs one way only, from Cosmos to Solana, and the old chain halts 90 days after cutover. A two-way bridge would keep both chains alive and add a second honeypot.

Why not stay on Cosmos with shared security? It would ease the staking cost but leave Akash running a chain, and it does nothing for distribution. Since the original RFP, Neutron has left Interchain Security and Noble has left Cosmos.

Why not an Ethereum L2? It was a strong option, and the EVM path stayed fully specified to the end. Solana came out ahead on cost under load, no single sequencer, the DePIN cluster and a more concrete offer.

Isn’t Solana known for outages? Solana had several full outages between 2021 and February 2024, each with a public post-mortem. Every candidate had to show 99.5% liveness over the trailing 24 months, and Solana met that bar. Akash’s escrow settles by elapsed time, so an outage delays settlement but does not lose funds.

Does Solana get any AKT or a revenue share? No. There is no stake, slot fee or revenue share. The only ongoing cost is transaction fees, about 0.075 SOL a day in network fees at today’s volume.

Can this be undone? Not for tokens: each migration to Solana is one-way. For the marketplace, governance or validators can still stop the cutover until about 6 hours before it happens.

What if the migration proposal fails? Nothing moves. The token does not launch, and the program returns to option analysis.

When does the token launch, and when is cutover? The token launches two weeks after the migration proposal passes, and only once two independent audits have passed. Cutover has no date yet; the cutover proposal sets it after audits close and rehearsals pass.

Sources

AEP-79: Akash on Shared Security, the original request for proposals, Dec 15, 2025.
Akash Chain Migration Program, v0.9, Aug 10, 2026. Most used here: 02 Target selection, 03 Solana architecture, 04 Ethereum architecture, 05 Token migration, 06 State and data migration, 07 Off-chain services and clients, 08 Security and audits, 10 Rollout and cutover and 12 Risk register.
Solana Foundation proposal to Akash, mid-2026.

Market and network figures, such as DEX volume, stablecoin supply and validator counts, are as reported in these documents in 2026 and the plan requires them to be re-verified at Gate 0.

Belle Femme Emmo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Solana has maintained its competitive position as the second-ranked blockchain network in weekly decentralized exchange (DEX) spot volume, trailing only Binance. This marks the 14th consecutive week that Solana has outperformed major centralized exchanges (CEXs) such as Bybit, Coinbase, and Kraken, as reported by @SolanaFloor. The reported weekly DEX spot volume on Solana was $12.63 billion for the week ending October 23, 2026, although this reflects a decline from $13.61 billion the previous week. This sustained high on-chain activity suggests a robust preference for Solana’s decentralized environment over traditional CEXs.

Key Takeaways Solana appears to consistently outperform major CEXs like Bybit, Coinbase, and Kraken in weekly DEX spot volume. The network’s weekly DEX volume of $12.63 billion indicates strong on-chain activity, though it has decreased from the previous week. Market pricing suggests that Solana’s performance may be influencing confidence in its potential price movements. What to Watch Watch for Solana’s ability to maintain or increase its DEX spot volume in the coming weeks. Developments such as further regulatory clarity, new partnerships, or technological upgrades could indicate scenarios supportive of Solana’s price reaching higher thresholds, including $190 in October. Conversely, significant declines in DEX volume or adverse regulatory actions may suggest scenarios where Solana’s price movement could be constrained.

Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.7% — — View market → November 1 2026 11.5% — — View market → November 1 2026 2.6% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.2% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.6% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.2% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.4% — — View market → November 1 2026 1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 2.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.8% — — View market →

Solana’s euro stablecoin supply grew by $22 million in a single week. That is more than every other tracked blockchain managed combined.

The figures come from data tracked by Token Terminal for the week ending October 25, 2026.

The numbers behind the euro push
The entire euro stablecoin market, across all chains, is estimated at between $835 million and $916 million. By that measure, Solana’s one-week addition equals roughly 2.4% to 2.6% of the whole market.

Solana now holds an estimated 13.7% to 14.8% share of euro stablecoins. That puts it in second place, with Ethereum still comfortably out in front.

The euro tokens sit on top of a much larger stablecoin base. Total stablecoin value on Solana now exceeds $15 billion.

Who is issuing euros on Solana
Several regulated issuers now offer euro stablecoins on the network.

Circle’s EURC is the most familiar name. Société Générale Forge, the digital asset arm of the French banking group, issues EURCV on Solana.

AllUnity’s EURAU joined the network more recently, expanding to Solana in April 2026. Each of these issuers operates under Europe’s MiCA framework.

MiCA, short for Markets in Crypto-Assets, is the European Union’s rulebook for digital assets. Issuers that comply get a clear legal lane to offer stablecoins to European users and businesses.

That clarity has opened the door to payment integrations as well. Thunes, a cross-border payments firm, is among the integrations tied to compliant euro stablecoin activity.

Solana’s appeal for these issuers rests on cheap, efficient transactions. Its growing roster of institutional and payment partnerships adds another reason for euro liquidity to settle there for transfers and trading.

A network that has been quietly filling up
Addresses holding stablecoins on Solana have surpassed 14 million. In late 2024, that figure sat below 4 million.

What this means for the euro stablecoin race
Ethereum remains the dominant home for euro stablecoins, but Solana’s weekly pace shows it is the chain gaining ground fastest among those tracked.

Market share estimates vary. Solana’s position sits somewhere between 13.7% and 14.8% depending on how the total market is measured, and that range will shift as new supply comes online across every chain.

Concentration is another factor to watch. With a handful of issuers driving supply, growth on any chain can swing sharply when one issuer mints or redeems in size.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Kaye Quema. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

BloomTrading has promised to reimburse nine affected wallets following reports that nearly $1 million in Solana was drained from users of its cryptocurrency trading bot.

Summary

Blockchain investigators linked approximately 9,408 SOL in suspicious transfers to 49 reportedly affected wallets. BloomTrading pledged full reimbursement for nine wallets while investigating a possible third-party security compromise. One reported victim lost 1,636 SOL, valued at approximately $166,000 during the incident. The platform has not confirmed the cause of the drains or reconciled the different victim counts. BloomTrading, in an October 26 statement, said it would fully compensate nine affected wallets by transferring replacement funds to new addresses designated by their owners.

The announcement followed complaints from Solana traders who discovered unauthorized withdrawals from wallets associated with the automated trading platform. 

Separately, blockchain investigators estimated that 9,408 SOL, worth approximately $954,000, had reached an address suspected of receiving stolen cryptocurrency from 49 victims.

Source: Onchain Lens/X BloomTrading users report nearly $1 million in stolen SOL Reports of the suspected compromise began circulating after several traders shared wallet addresses and transaction records showing unexpected withdrawals.

Blockchain monitoring account Onchain Lens identified approximately 9,408 SOL transferred from 49 suspected victims, with the largest individual loss reaching 1,636 SOL, worth around $166,000 at the time. The estimate covers transactions linked to one suspected receiving address, meaning the final loss could be higher.

Among the complainants, trader Domy said three wallets had been drained of approximately 800 SOL. The trader published the affected addresses and requested assistance contacting cryptocurrency exchanges to help trace the missing funds.

In a separate post, Domy reported another unexpected transfer worth approximately $64,000 and shared a Solscan transaction reference. 

Another trader, Pikalosi, described losses affecting members of the Solana trading community, including complaints involving Domy and another account. The trader urged others not to blame victims for their trading strategies.

BloomTrading promises refunds to nine affected wallets Following the complaints, BloomTrading said it would reimburse the owners of nine affected wallets directly through newly designated, secure addresses.

The company rejected suggestions that users needed to organize a community relief fund, saying it intended to cover the losses itself.

“We’re still actively investigating the root cause,” BloomTrading stated, acknowledging that the inquiry would examine whether a third-party service provider had been compromised.

The reimbursement pledge does not establish that compensation has already reached users. BloomTrading has not disclosed a payment schedule, the total amount it expects to refund, or the method it will use to verify claims.

Its identification of nine affected wallets differs from the 49 suspected victims cited in preliminary blockchain monitoring. Neither the company’s statement nor the available transaction evidence explains whether the larger figure includes unrelated addresses, additional users, or transactions outside its confirmed investigation.

Reports indicate that some trading services were temporarily paused while the company investigated. The precise functions affected and their restoration status have not been independently confirmed.

Imported private keys raise questions about wallet security Several complaints involved wallets whose private keys had reportedly been imported into the trading bot, although investigators have not established whether the keys were exposed.

A private key allows its holder to authorize transactions. If an unauthorized party obtains it, disconnecting a wallet from an application will not prevent that party from moving the remaining assets.

The risks associated with Telegram trading bots include the storage and handling of private keys used to automate transactions. A compromised service may expose wallets that otherwise appear accessible only to their owners.

Some users reported that USDC balances remained untouched while SOL disappeared. The observations have not been established across all affected wallets and do not identify the method used to authorize the transfers.

Similar concerns followed an Avici wallet exploit in September, when unauthorized transactions reportedly caused more than $1 million in losses among Solana users.

The recent BullX service disruption involved a different trading platform and did not establish any connection to the BloomTrading incident.

What happens next in the BloomTrading investigation? BloomTrading has not identified a confirmed vulnerability, implicated a particular employee, or attributed the suspicious withdrawals to an external attacker.

The company’s investigation includes the possibility of a third-party compromise, but that remains one of several potential explanations.

Users whose private keys may have been exposed should transfer remaining assets to wallets generated with entirely new keys. Revoking application permissions alone cannot invalidate a compromised private key.

BloomTrading said its priority was to compensate affected users, determine what happened, and prevent another incident. It has not announced a completed investigation or published a detailed technical account of the unauthorized transactions.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has a new idea for squeezing more revenue out of his network. It involves minting fresh SOL, backed by tokenized collateral, with Solana’s own validators acting as the price referees.

Yakovenko, known across crypto as Toly, shared the concept in a post on X on October 24, 2026. He called it a validator stake-weighted oracle, which is a mouthful for a fairly intuitive pitch.

What Toly actually proposed
Start with the oracle part. In crypto, an oracle is a service that tells a blockchain what something is worth in the outside world.

Most oracles today are run by dedicated networks. Toly’s twist is to hand that job to Solana’s validators, the operators who already process transactions and secure the chain.

The “stake-weighted” part means a validator’s input would count in proportion to how much SOL is staked with it. Think of it as a shareholder vote, where bigger holders get louder voices because they have more to lose.

Once validators agree on what a piece of tokenized collateral is worth, the system would mint new SOL against it. The idea is that this minted SOL helps facilitate transactions on the network.

Then comes the revenue angle. Under the proposal, profits generated through that activity would be taxed, with the goal of boosting network revenue.

Why the timing is interesting
The proposal lands just days after Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade went live on October 21, 2026. That upgrade improved transaction finality to approximately 150 milliseconds and streamlined how validators submit their vote transactions.

That matters for an oracle built on validators. If the people securing the chain are also going to agree on asset prices, the machinery they use to vote needs to be quick and efficient.

Alpenglow tuned exactly that machinery. Toly’s idea essentially asks what else those faster, leaner validator votes could be used for beyond confirming blocks.

The proposal also builds on a pattern already baked into Solana. Stake-weighting shows up throughout the network’s design, so extending it to pricing collateral is less a leap than a sideways step.

Where this fits in Solana’s bigger picture
Solana has been leaning into tokenized assets, which are real-world or financial assets represented as tokens on a blockchain. Price data for those assets is currently supplied by oracle networks such as Pyth and RedStone.

Those providers play a central role in price discovery for real-world assets on the chain. A validator-run oracle would not necessarily replace them, but it would introduce a native alternative tied directly to Solana’s own security model.

Toly’s post sketched the basic mechanics without naming specific collateral tokens or DeFi platforms. Beyond SOL itself and the general category of tokenized collateral, no particular assets or protocols were identified.

It is worth being clear about stage, too. This is an idea shared on social media, not a formal governance proposal. There is no governance vote scheduled and no implementation timeline. The concept has not yet surfaced in Solana’s formal governance discussions or technical forums.

What this means for SOL holders and the ecosystem
The flip side is that minting new SOL changes the supply picture. Any version of this would need to convince holders that new issuance is safely backed and properly priced, rather than quietly diluting existing stakes.

Putting validators in charge of pricing also concentrates responsibilities. The same parties securing the chain would be influencing how much SOL gets created, which raises fair questions about incentives and the risk of manipulation by large stakers.

For existing oracle providers like Pyth and RedStone, a native validator oracle would represent a new kind of competition, or possibly a complement. How the two models coexist would likely depend on what assets the system ultimately supports.

The things to watch are concrete. Does the idea move from an X post into a formal proposal, does it attract technical scrutiny on Solana’s developer forums, and does Toly or anyone else specify which tokenized assets would qualify as collateral.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Altcoins

24 October 2026
|
21:45

Solana (SOL) briefly slipped under $100 on Saturday, three days after its biggest network upgrade went live, as ETF outflows and a market-wide wave of liquidations weighed on the token.

Key Takeaways

Alpenglow went live; SOL fell 5% next day.

US Solana ETFs shed $30.3M in five days.

Market-wide liquidations top $816M, 84% longs.

SOL down 15% in October, Bitcoin about 4%.

Binance’s SOL/USDT daily chart on TradingView shows the token about 19% below its recent swing high, trading near $100.8 with the daily candle still open.

Upgrade day ended at resistance
Solana switched on Alpenglow on Wednesday, replacing TowerBFT, the consensus system the network had run since 2020. Solana’s official account on X said finality “just went from ~12.8 seconds to ~150ms.” For exchanges crediting deposits and merchants taking payments, that means a transaction becomes irreversible in a fraction of a second instead of several seconds, according to Anza, the engineering firm behind the upgrade. The 150ms figure still awaits independent measurement.

The token did not get the same lift. SOL rallied to about $109 on upgrade day, straight into its main resistance cluster, and gave the move back with a drop of about 5% the next session.

Where the selling came from
Two forces have worked against SOL since then, one specific to Solana and one hitting the whole market.

Fund flows (SoSoValue)

$30.3M net out of US spot Solana ETFs in the five trading days to October 22

About $8.5M out on October 22, with no fund taking in money

Net inflows on just two October days through October 22

Leverage (CoinGlass, 24h)

$816M in crypto futures liquidated market-wide

196,239 traders liquidated

Largest single liquidation: an $11.85M Ether position on Binance

Longs 84.3% · $688M
Shorts 15.7% · $128M

Most of the liquidations hit in the final 12 hours of that window, as Bitcoin slid toward $80,000. On their own, the numbers do not say whether SOL has a problem of its own or is simply caught in a falling market. The October scorecard does.

SOL

−15%

Bitcoin

−4%

Approximate change from each coin’s October open.

SOL is down about 15% from its October open near $118, while Bitcoin, trading near $80,500 on Saturday, has lost roughly 4% over the same stretch. The market-wide flush explains the timing of Saturday’s drop. It does not explain why SOL has fallen nearly four times as far as Bitcoin this month, and the steady drain from the ETFs is the clearest Solana-specific reason.

Three tests of $100
The round number carries extra weight because it also sits on the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement of SOL’s move from about $60 to $125.

Oct 15
Low just above $100, and buyers stepped in.

Oct 18
A second low just above $100, followed by the bounce that carried SOL into upgrade day.

Oct 24
An intraday low near $98.6 before price climbed back above $100.

The first two tests held on a closing basis. Saturday’s was the first to trade through the level, which makes the daily close the number to watch.

Levels above and below $100

●
Recent swing high
~$124.9
+24%

●
50-day SMA + 0.236 Fib
~$109.6
+9%

◆
Current price
~$100.8
–

●
0.382 Fib + $100 round number
~$100.1
−1%

●
100-day SMA to 0.5 Fib
~$92.4–$96.5
−4% to −8%

●
200-day SMA
~$88.3
−12%

●
Golden pocket (0.618-0.65 Fib)
~$82.7–$84.8
−16% to −18%

●
0.786 Fib
~$73.9
−27%

The 50-day SMA supported SOL through September and early October before rolling over, and it now caps rallies alongside the 0.236 Fib. Below $100, there is a gap of about 4% before the next support, so a clean break would leave little to slow a move until the 100-day SMA. The 100- and 200-day averages are both still rising, which keeps the long-term trend pointing up.

The case for each side
Bulls can argue that Saturday’s break came in the middle of a market-wide liquidation wave, the kind of forced selling that can fade once leveraged positions are cleared.

Bears can point to the size of the ETF drain. The $30.3 million that left in five trading days equals about 2% of the roughly $1.53 billion the US Solana funds hold, a steady withdrawal of the kind of patient demand that usually turns a relief bounce into a recovery.

Potential Moves (not a forecast)

SOL is clinging to $100, with the $109.6 resistance cluster overhead and the $92.4–$96.5 zone below.

↗ If $100 holds: A daily close back above $105, roughly halfway to resistance, could set up a retest of the 50-day SMA and 0.236 Fib.

↘ If $100 gives way: A daily close below it before the end of October could open a slide toward the 100-day SMA and 0.5 Fib.

◎ Bigger picture: The 200-day SMA sits just above the golden pocket. Holding it would keep the long-term structure intact, while losing it would put the golden pocket in play.

Method: daily SOL/USDT candles from Binance on TradingView, with the latest candle still open. Fibonacci levels run from the recent swing low to the swing high. Liquidation figures are a CoinGlass snapshot from Saturday evening. October performance is measured from each coin’s approximate monthly open.

This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency prices are volatile.

Author

Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else.
It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other.
What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn?
He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.

Crypto asset management company Bitwise stated in its latest research that Solana stands out.

Accordingly, 72.8% of all SOL staked on the Solana network is concentrated among validators located in Europe.

Europe Leads in Solana Stake Distribution!
According to Bitwise’s Staking Report, the majority of SOL staked on the Solana network is concentrated in Europe. Europe ranks first with a 72.8% share, followed by North America with 16.2%, Asia with 10.6%, and South America with 0.4%.

The concentration in Europe is particularly evident in the region between Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and London. This distribution presents a remarkable picture in terms of geographical centralization and connection delays in the Solana network infrastructure.

According to the Bitwise report, the reduction in slot times has exacerbated regional disparities. This is because Solana gradually reduced slot times from 400 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds between August and September 2026 in an effort to increase network processing speed and reduce finalization times.

According to Bitwise, this change has contributed to faster transaction finalization while also reducing the time validators have to receive blocks, verify them, and submit votes.

The concentration of staking in Solana within Europe raises questions about the impact of MiCA regulations on staking services. However, the mere presence of a validator in Europe does not automatically necessitate licensing. According to ESMA, companies offering staking and custody services must comply with the relevant MiCA regulations, but neither Bitwise nor the Solana Foundation have provided an assessment of the direct regulatory implications of this concentration in Europe.

*This is not investment advice.

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A Nasdaq-listed company that used to be called Helius Medical Technologies now carries a strategic seal of approval from the Hong Kong government.

Solana Company (NASDAQ: HSDT) has been recognized as a strategic enterprise by Hong Kong’s Office for Attracting Strategic Enterprises, better known as OASES. Alongside that designation, the firm has opened an office in the city to act as its Asia-Pacific headquarters.

The detail that stands out: Solana Company was the only blockchain infrastructure firm in the 2026 OASES batch.

What Solana Company is building in Hong Kong
The new Hong Kong office will serve as the executive hub for the company’s operations across the Asia-Pacific region.

The centerpiece of that plan is something the company calls the Pacific Backbone. It is an initiative to develop low-latency infrastructure linking four major financial centers: Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, and Singapore.

The Pacific Backbone is aimed at staking and validation services. On a proof-of-stake blockchain like Solana, validators are the operators who process transactions and keep the network honest. Staking is how token holders put their coins to work backing those validators, typically in exchange for rewards.

The company is also expanding its validator operations. That includes partnerships with the Jito Foundation, a name familiar to anyone who follows Solana’s staking ecosystem.

On the balance sheet side, Solana Company holds more than 2.2 million SOL tokens.

Joseph Chee, the company’s Chairman and CEO, pointed to Hong Kong’s rapid progress on digital assets as a key reason for the move. He also stressed the city’s standing as a global financial center.

The firm says its broader goal is to build institutional engagement within compliant frameworks.

From Helius Medical to a SOL treasury
The company shifted its focus to a Solana-centric strategy in 2025. The rebrand to Solana Company came in September 2025. It followed a funding round that exceeded $500 million.

What this means for Solana Company and the region
As the only blockchain infrastructure firm in the 2026 OASES batch, Solana Company has a head start on positioning itself as a go-to partner for compliant Solana staking in Hong Kong.

The milestones worth tracking are concrete. Watch for progress updates on the Pacific Backbone, new validator partnerships beyond the Jito Foundation, and any announced institutional clients in Hong Kong.

Disclosure: This article was edited by John Chen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Reflect Money wants every app on Solana to have its own stablecoin. Its new tool, Create, is designed to make that a one-click affair.

The Solana-based protocol launched Create on October 22, 2026. It lets users and applications deploy custom yield-bearing stablecoins in a single transaction. The pitch is simple. Stablecoins that sit around doing nothing are a wasted opportunity, and Reflect thinks it can put them to work.

How Create works Instead of building collateral systems, liquidity plumbing and redemption logic from scratch, an issuer picks from a menu and ships.

That menu is a set of reviewed collateral options. According to the research findings, these include USDC+, senior tranches and tokenized assets. Each one backs the new token and generates the yield that holders earn.

Tokens launched through Create are built to plug straight into Solana decentralized exchanges, including Jupiter and Titan. So a freshly minted coin can trade on day one instead of languishing in a wallet nobody checks.

Minting and redeeming happen atomically, with no queues. Put plainly, you either get your tokens or your money back in the same instant, without waiting in line behind everyone else trying to exit.

Issuers can keep a percentage of the yield their stablecoin generates. That turns a stablecoin from a cost center into a potential revenue line for whoever launches it.

The numbers behind Reflect Reflect is not starting from zero. By the time Create went live, the protocol had issued 7 assets, with an average annual percentage yield of around 21%.

Total trading volume across the platform stood at $5.52 million at launch.

Reflect is aiming at the approximately $280 billion in idle stablecoin holdings that currently earn nothing.

The company describes its approach as “software-as-a-stablecoin.” The idea is to package on-chain decentralized finance strategies into liquid yield products that feel more like a savings account than a strategy deck.

Reflect also draws a clear line about what it is not. It is not a stablecoin issuer or custodian. Its protocols handle risk-adjusted allocations and asset wrapping transparently on-chain, positioning the company as a neutral operator rather than a traditional issuer.

From hackathon winner to infrastructure play Reflect Money was founded in May 2024. Its founding goal was to fix the inefficiency of stablecoin holdings by programmatically routing capital into DeFi opportunities while keeping that capital liquid and in users’ control.

The project won Grand Champion at the 2024 Solana Radar hackathon. In September 2025, it raised $3.75 million in a seed round.

Before Create, Reflect’s lineup centered on two products. Earn includes USDC+ and USDT+, while Protect offers yield tranches. The infrastructure also includes an insurance pool for risk management and a software development kit that lets developers integrate Reflect into their own products.

Create builds directly on that foundation. USDC+, one of the Earn products, now doubles as a collateral option for other people’s stablecoins.

What this means Yield on stablecoins comes from somewhere, and the around 21% average APY on Reflect’s assets reflects the DeFi strategies and collateral underneath. Those yields depend on market conditions and the performance of the assets backing each token.

Reflect says its collateral options are reviewed, and the insurance pool adds a layer of protection.

The things worth tracking from here are straightforward. Watch how many issuers actually use Create, whether the asset count climbs meaningfully beyond 7, and whether platform volume grows past $5.52 million.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Kaye Quema. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Solana has announced that it has recorded $5 trillion in stablecoin volume this year, with more than two months remaining in 2026. This figure significantly surpasses the $3 trillion volume recorded by the blockchain in 2025. The volume increase indicates strong adoption and high transaction activity on Solana’s network. This development comes amid Solana’s growing share in the global stablecoin market, where it holds approximately 5% of the supply, yet processes a disproportionately high transaction volume.

Key Takeaways Solana’s report of $5 trillion in stablecoin volume appears consistent with increased network adoption and transaction activity. Market pricing suggests that the significant milestone could positively influence Solana’s price by indicating robust network use. The Solana price prediction market shows a current 66.5% YES for the question of whether Solana will dip to $100 by the end of October 2026. What to Watch Market participants will be observing whether Solana’s transaction volume will continue to escalate, potentially affecting its price. Key events such as regulatory decisions from the SEC or announcements from major partners like Samsung may also influence market dynamics. Observers are also likely to focus on the impact of Solana’s technological upgrades, such as the recent Alpenglow activation, on network performance and adoption rates.

Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h November 1 2026 0.5% — — View market → November 1 2026 1.8% — — View market → November 1 2026 14% — — View market → November 1 2026 3.6% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.2% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.5% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.9% — — View market → November 1 2026 1.3% — — View market → November 1 2026 1.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 4% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.4% — — View market → November 1 2026 1.2% — — View market → November 1 2026 65.5% — — View market →

Wed 21 Oct 2026 ▪
5
min read ▪ by
Luc Jose A.

Summarize this article with:

Solana replaced TowerBFT with Alpenglow on its mainnet on October 21, in its most significant consensus change since launch. The new protocol targets a finality close to 150 milliseconds, compared to about 12.8 seconds previously, but part of the planned architecture is still to be deployed.

In Brief

Solana activated Alpenglow on October 21, replacing TowerBFT on its mainnet.
The new consensus targets a finality of 150 milliseconds, compared to 12.8 seconds previously.
The transition occurred without a network-wide outage, with participation from 654 validators.
The Votor mechanism speeds block validation through new voting procedures and BLS signatures.
Alpenglow promises faster final transactions and better fault tolerance.

Alpenglow Replaces TowerBFT on the Mainnet
The activation began at the start of epoch 1064. However, the network retained TowerBFT for the first 5000 slots of this epoch, about 18 minutes, to prepare the transition to the new system.

The transition completed at slot 459653000. The validators then formed the cryptographic certificate marking the birth of the Alpenglow consensus. Anza, the lead developer of the Agave client, described this operation as the “greatest upgrade in Solana’s history”.

The key elements of the activation illustrate the magnitude of the change :

Alpenglow replaces the TowerBFT consensus used since Solana’s inception ;
The targeted finality goes from 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds ;
654 validators participated in the transition ;
The switch from one consensus to the other lasted about 900 milliseconds ;
Validator votes are no longer recorded as on-chain transactions ;
BLS signatures allow multiple votes to be aggregated into a single certificate ;
Each admitted validator must pay a ticket of 0.8 SOL per epoch.

The transfer occurred without a full network halt. During the critical phase, blocks temporarily stopped including user transactions and carried only the necessary votes. This precaution was to allow a rollback without invalidating a user-signed operation.

Once the genesis certificate was formed, nodes handed the consensus over to the new Votor algorithm. Transactions then resumed under the Alpenglow regime.

Votor Dramatically Reduces Final Confirmation Delay
The consensus allows validators to agree on the order of transactions and when a block can no longer be reverted. With TowerBFT, Solana produced blocks quickly, but their full finality required about 12.8 seconds.

Votor uses two voting procedures in parallel. The first can finalize a block in one round when 80% of tokens staked staking respond. The second can conclude after two rounds with 60% participation. The protocol adopts the path that finishes first.

Votes are no longer recorded as ordinary transactions. Validators exchange signed messages directly via the BLS system. Multiple signatures can then be aggregated into a compact certificate, freeing block space for user operations.

Alpenglow also targets better fault tolerance. Its design allows simultaneous tolerance of 20% of tokens staked on offline validators and 20% on hostile actors. TowerBFT relied on a limit of less than one-third malicious participation.

For users, the expected effect mainly concerns payments, decentralized exchanges, and applications demanding quick certainty. A finality near 150 milliseconds would reduce the wait before an operation is considered irreversible. However, this gain doesn’t mean all applications will respond that fast, as their interfaces, servers, and controls add their own delays.

Part of the Upgrade Is Still to Come
The activation on October 21 mainly concerns Votor, the new consensus mechanism. It does not yet deploy all the components described in the Alpenglow project.

Rotor, the future block propagation system, is set to replace Turbine in a later phase. It plans to distribute data shards via a single relay and to use the network’s full bandwidth. Its activation schedule is not yet set.

The economic operation of validators is also changing. Off-chain votes remove the old fees paid for each vote transaction. Instead, the protocol charges a validation ticket of 0.8 SOL per epoch on the vote account. An operator lacking the required amount cannot vote or produce blocks during the following epoch.

The comparison with Ethereum’s “The Merge” mainly illustrates the technical significance of the change. Ethereum abandoned proof-of-work for proof-of-stake in 2022. Solana keeps its general model but directly replaces the engine organizing agreement among its validators.

The coming weeks will verify whether the observed finality remains near 150 milliseconds during high activity periods. Network stability, validator participation, and the future deployment of Rotor will determine if Alpenglow lives up to its promises.

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Luc Jose A.

Diplômé de Sciences Po Toulouse et titulaire d'une certification consultant blockchain délivrée par Alyra, j'ai rejoint l'aventure Cointribune en 2019.
Convaincu du potentiel de la blockchain pour transformer de nombreux secteurs de l'économie, j'ai pris l'engagement de sensibiliser et d'informer le grand public sur cet écosystème en constante évolution. Mon objectif est de permettre à chacun de mieux comprendre la blockchain et de saisir les opportunités qu'elle offre. Je m'efforce chaque jour de fournir une analyse objective de l'actualité, de décrypter les tendances du marché, de relayer les dernières innovations technologiques et de mettre en perspective les enjeux économiques et sociétaux de cette révolution en marche.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

Crypto asset manager Grayscale continues to take innovative steps regarding cryptocurrencies. In its latest announcement, Grayscale stated that it will allow investors to invest in spot cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin directly in exchange for shares in its ETFs and other investment products.

Accordingly, Grayscale has implemented an in-kind subscription model in 10 of its products, allowing investors to exchange eligible digital assets for direct investment product shares. The new model aims to facilitate the integration of crypto assets into traditional portfolio management.

The Need for Cash Conversion is Decreasing!
Grayscale has announced a new investment method for some of its investment products. This system allows investors to directly exchange their crypto assets for shares in Grayscale’s investment products without first having to convert them to cash.

The company stated that this method could reduce operational burdens stemming from custody and security processes, lower transaction costs in crypto markets, and facilitate the inclusion of digital assets in traditional investment portfolios.

10 Cryptocurrencies, Including Bitcoin and Ethereum, on the List!
According to Grayscale, the subscription service includes 10 investment products, including Bitcoin and Ethereum: “Bitcoin, Ethereum, Avalanche, Chainlink, Dogecoin, Hyperliquid, Solana, XRP, Sui, Zcash”

“Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF (BTC)

Grayscale Ethereum Staking Mini ETF (ETH)

Grayscale Avalanche Staking ETF (GAVA)

Grayscale Chainlink Trust ETF (GLNK)

Grayscale Dogecoin Trust ETF (GDOG)

Grayscale Hyperliquid Staking ETF (HYPG)

Grayscale Solana Staking ETF (GSOL)

Grayscale Sui Staking ETF (GSUI)

Grayscale XRP Trust ETF (GXRP)

The Zcash ETF (ZCSH)”

Finally, according to Grayscale’s statement, the service is available to eligible investors. Clients wishing to trade on the primary market must work with authorized participants or the institutions that act as intermediaries for these participants.

*This is not investment advice.

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Germany's Sparkasse network has started crypto trading in its banking app via DekaBank, covering Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Solana and Polygon's POL, with a staggered bank-by-bank rollout.

Germany's Sparkasse banking network has begun rolling out crypto trading inside its banking app, bringing Bitcoin ($BTC), Ether ($ETH, @ethereum), XRP ($XRP, @XRP), Solana ($SOL, @solana) and Polygon's POL token ($POL, @0xPolygon) to customers of Europe's largest banking group by assets.

The service went live on October 19, 2026, but access is not yet nationwide. Each local savings bank must switch it on individually, so only customers of participating institutions can use it for now.

How the Sparkasse crypto service worksThe product is called "Krypto, powered by Deka" and is run by DekaBank, the securities house of the Sparkassen group. According to Bloomberg, the rollout will be gradual over the coming months, and each Sparkasse decides on its own whether to offer it. DekaBank handles trade execution and custody. Customers open a separate crypto account with DekaBank inside the app's investing section, and a securities account is not required.

The fee is reported at €0.99 per order. DekaBank's announcement does not detail other costs such as spreads, according to fund research outlet e-fundresearch. Reporting also says the service is aimed at adult, self-directed investors and that no investment advice is given.

Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe is described as the largest financial services group in Germany and Europe by assets. Crypto assets held through the service are not covered by statutory deposit insurance, BeInCrypto notes.

Rollout pace and regulatory backdropOnly a handful of banks were live at launch. More than 230 institutions have reportedly expressed interest, and 30 to 40 additional banks are expected to join each month. Joachim Schmalzl of the German Savings Banks Association (DSGV) said it is for each savings bank to decide when to start, according to dpa. The association is aiming for a large share of interested banks to be connected in the first half of 2027.

The move marks a reversal for the group. Bloomberg reports that the Sparkassen long rejected crypto offerings and that its bodies recommended against crypto trading about four years ago because of the risks. The shift was justified by customer demand and a changed regulatory framework.

DekaBank received its licence under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets rules (MiCA) from Germany's BaFin in 2025, which lets it bundle trading, custody and customer support in one place, according to Bloomberg and e-fundresearch.

Sources:

Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance: Deka startet Bitcoin-Handel nach Sparkassen-Richtungsschwenke-fundresearch: DekaBank startet Kryptohandel fuer Sparkassen-Kunden

Ethereum staking hit a new record in the third quarter of 2026, but investors found themselves earning smaller yields as rewards were spread across a wider pool of staked ETH.

According to Bitwise's latest quarterly staking report, 43.8 million ETH, which is nearly 36% of the total supply, was locked into staking at the end of September. At the same time, annualized staking yields averaged 2.63%, down from 2.81% in the prior quarter.

"As more ETH is staked, rewards are distributed across a larger pool, reducing the yield earned on each ETH," the researchers wrote.

Staked Ethereum QoQ. Source: BitwiseInstitutional staking drives Ethereum inflowsEthereum recorded net staking inflows of just under 2 million ETH in the third quarter, its sixth consecutive quarter of positive flows.

Institutional staking has been a big driver of these flows. Bitwise pointed to Bitmine, the leading Ethereum treasury company led by Tom Lee, whose staking rose more than 1,000% from 410,000 ETH in December to 5.07 million ETH as of Sept. 27.

Newly issued ETH accounted for more than 96% of Ethereum's staking yield, leaving the rest to come from transaction tips and revenue from ordering transactions (MEV).

In the same period, Ethereum network revenue fell to roughly $40.6 million from $63 million in the second quarter.

Solana staking hits record 69% of supplySolana's active staking numbers also hit a record, climbing to 440.5 million SOL, totaling 69% of the total supply. Similar to Ethereum, gross staking yields fell around 6%, with newly issued tokens making up 90% of returns.

The network recorded 14.2 billion transactions, up 45% from the second quarter, while average transaction costs stayed mostly flat.

Solana Non-Vote Transactions. Source: BitwiseTransaction fees jumped 49% to $76 million, driven mostly by memecoin trading. Tokenized equities trading volume climbed 45% to more than $6.9 billion.

1inch adds 450+ Ondo tokenized US stocks and ETFs on Solana, using Fusion RFQ matching for MEV-resistant execution of assets backed 1:1 by regulated custody.

@1inch has added more than 450 tokenized public stocks and ETFs from @OndoFinance to its Solana routing, giving users on the @Solana network access to tokenized equity trading through the 1inch ecosystem. The integration uses 1inch Fusion's RFQ matching protocol and the company's consumer apps to deliver MEV-resistant execution for tokenized assets backed 1:1 by shares held in regulated custody.

How the integration worksOndo's tokens are designed to mirror the underlying securities. According to Ondo's legal documentation, the tokens are fully backed on a 1:1 basis, plus a buffer, by securities held through a regulated custodial broker-dealer, along with cash in transit. Ondo's documentation also states that the structure is a note issued by a bankruptcy-remote special purpose vehicle in the British Virgin Islands.

Holders should note the legal distinction. MetaMask's explainer on Ondo Stocks says the tokens give economic exposure to an asset's price and total return, including reinvested dividends, rather than legal ownership. It adds that equities are held via US-registered broker-dealer Alpaca Markets and verified through independent attestations from Ankura Trust.

Ondo's tokens are aimed at users outside the US. Ondo has said its tokenized stocks are available from anywhere outside the US, subject to jurisdictional and other restrictions, and that mints and redemptions are aligned with market hours while transfers can happen at any time.

Ondo's growth on Solana1inch is not new to the Ondo ecosystem. At the platform's September 2025 launch, The Block reported that 1inch had upgraded its Swap API to give access to the tokenized assets through its dapp, wallet and partner platforms in eligible jurisdictions.

Ondo then expanded to Solana. Ondo said in a post on Solana's website that users could access more than 200 tokenized US stocks and ETFs on the network at launch, including NVDA, AAPL, META, SPY and QQQ. The platform has since been renamed Ondo Stocks. Genfinity reported that the rebrand followed TVL passing $1 billion and the catalog growing above 438 assets.

The 1inch integration brings that catalog into a DEX routing environment. For traders, the pitch is tighter pricing and protection from MEV, the practice of reordering or inserting transactions to extract value, on assets that track traditional equity markets. As with all tokenized securities, access depends on local eligibility rules, and the tokens do not carry the same rights as shares held directly.

Sources:

Ondo Finance: Legal and Regulatory documentationMetaMask: What is Ondo Stocks?Solana: Ondo Global Markets on Solana

Solana has reported 8.92 billion successful non-vote transactions for the third quarter of 2026, more than double its Q4 2025 total, while SOL has remained near $104.

Summary

8.92 billion successful non-vote transactions were recorded in Q3, according to Solana’s Allium-sourced chart. 104% growth compares Q3 2026 with Q4 2025; quarter-over-quarter growth was approximately 24%. Solana Compass recorded 8.78 billion completed transactions, leaving a difference between the two datasets. SOL traded near $104, while the organic share of quarterly transactions remained unquantified. Solana’s chart, published in an Oct. 20 post and sourced to Allium, puts Q3 activity 104% above the 4.38 billion transactions recorded in Q4 2025. The same chart shows 7.54 billion in Q1 2026 and 7.19 billion in Q2.

Using those rounded figures, Q3 transactions grew approximately 24.1% from Q2, adding 1.73 billion successful transactions. Against Q1, the gain was 18.3%, making the latest quarter the busiest of the four periods displayed.

The chart shows a 350 million transaction decline between Q1 and Q2, or 4.6% using rounded totals. Q3 then exceeded Q1’s previous high by 1.38 billion transactions.

The 104% headline compares quarters nine months apart. It is neither a quarter-over-quarter growth rate nor a year-over-year comparison.

Across the 92 days from July through September, the reported total works out to roughly 97 million successful non-vote transactions a day, or 1,122 per second. Both averages are calculated from the rounded quarterly figure.

Solana transaction counts differ between datasets Solana Compass’s independently indexed data puts completed non-vote transactions at 8.78 billion for Q3, compared with 7.13 billion in Q2. Its quarterly growth rate was 23.3%, close to the rate calculated from Solana’s chart.

The two Q3 totals differ by 140 million transactions, equivalent to approximately 1.6% of the Compass count. The figures support a similar direction of growth, although the examined material does not reconcile the indexing difference.

In its Oct. 1 analysis, Compass defines completed transactions as those that execute and retain their results. Its count excludes validator votes and includes activity from users, applications and bots.

September’s completed transactions reached 3.18 billion in that dataset, while reverted transactions fell to 1.52 billion from 2.19 billion in August. Compass says its raw spot-swap figures include circular and bot-driven trading.

Successful execution therefore does not establish that a transaction came from a human user. Neither the supplied chart nor the examined Compass analysis assigns an organic share to the 8.92 billion figure.

SOL trades near $104 despite the quarterly activity record CoinGecko’s retrieved market snapshot put SOL at $104.21, up 3.3% over 24 hours but down 3.5% over seven days. Market capitalization stood near $61.4 billion, with daily trading volume of $2.89 billion.

The same page listed a 24-hour price range of $100.48 to $106.05. Its financial-data section showed $642,458 in daily fees and $109,966 in project revenue, separate measures from transaction counts.

Those figures cover a current 24-hour window, not the July-to-September reporting period. They do not establish whether quarterly fees grew at the same rate as successful transactions.

As crypto.news previously reported, SOL had already fallen below $105 by Oct. 18. That report recorded a price near $104 and a seven-day loss of approximately 5.6%, alongside nine consecutive sessions of U.S. spot SOL ETF withdrawals documented in its Oct. 16 coverage.

The quarterly transaction figure and October market snapshots cover different periods. The available evidence does not establish that the transaction growth caused, or should have prevented, the token’s recent price decline.

Tokenized stock trading provides one separate activity measure DWF Labs research covered on Oct. 16 put Solana’s share of tracked tokenized-equity spot DEX volume at 31% in early October, compared with 99.8% in January.

Across the chains in that study, weekly tokenized-equity DEX trading reached $2.54 billion in the week of Oct. 5, against $45.8 million in the week of Jan. 5. Weekly transfers reached $17.5 billion, using a definition that includes movements involving trading and lending protocols.

The research measured trading and transfer values in dollars, not the number of successful transactions. Its figures do not identify how many of Solana’s Q3 transactions involved tokenized stocks.

DWF Labs placed tokenized equities deployed in DeFi at $313 million by Oct. 15. Kamino, Jupiter Lend and Frankencoin held a combined $51.3 million, while pools on Uniswap V4, Raydium and Aerodrome held $77.9 million.

Those are cross-chain totals. The study does not allocate the entire amounts to Solana or establish that tokenized equities accounted for most of its transaction growth.

Alpenglow changes consensus while keeping execution intact An Oct. 19 report scheduled Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade for Oct. 21, targeting roughly 150-millisecond finality. The reported activation estimate had moved from 14:50 UTC toward 13:20 UTC as the relevant epoch approached.

Solana’s own technical page describes Votor as a replacement for TowerBFT’s voting and finality process. Validators send votes directly to one another and combine them into certificates, instead of placing vote transactions inside blocks.

The Foundation’s documentation says transaction execution, programs, and fee mechanics remain unchanged. Ordinary users keep the same process for signing, sending, and approving transactions.

Rotor, a separate proposed change to block-data distribution, is reserved for a later release without a scheduled activation date.

Two of Wall Street’s most recognizable names are running Solana funds. This week, they went in opposite directions.

Morgan Stanley’s Solana Trust, ticker MSOL, has not sold any SOL and has pulled in fresh money. Meanwhile, Fidelity sold $1.8 million of SOL in a single session. Same asset, same week, very different vibes.

The broader category of US spot Solana exchange-traded products saw outflows of approximately $25 million during the week. MSOL was swimming upstream.

The flow numbers On October 8, 2026, MSOL recorded an inflow between $1.77M and $1.8M. That came on a day when the Solana ETP cohort as a whole was losing money.

Fidelity’s FSOL went the other way. The fund logged a $1.8M outflow in October, matching reports that Fidelity sold SOL.

For context on scale, MSOL is still the smaller player. It manages approximately $52M in assets, which trails competitors such as BSOL.

FSOL has also shown intermittent redemptions rather than a single bad day.

How Solana ETPs got here The Solana ETP cohort first launched in May 2026. Since then, it has accumulated approximately $1.56 billion in net inflows.

As of mid-October 2026, the group held around $1.62 billion in net assets.

MSOL listed on NYSE Arca in late July 2026, entering a market where rivals already had a head start on assets.

To compete, Morgan Stanley leaned on two features. The first is price: MSOL charges an expense ratio of 0.14%. The second is yield: the fund passes up to 95% of staking rewards to investors.

What this means for Solana fund investors When the overall category is shedding money, a fund with a low fee and staking pass-through still managed to attract capital.

An inflow of around $1.8 million into a fund of approximately $52M is meaningful for MSOL. Measured against a category holding around $1.62 billion, it is a rounding error.

The broader category flows deserve the most attention. Approximately $25 million in weekly outflows, after a strong summer, hints that investors are taking a wait-and-see approach. Cumulative net inflows of approximately $1.56 billion give the group a sizable cushion.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Solana Foundation official brand assets (solana.com/branding)

SkyAI has sold its entire Solana treasury and initiated a $201 million tender offer, according to a report by The Defiant. The company, which previously held 2,077,799 SOL valued at approximately $218.5 million, reported it now holds $223.8 million in cash. This move by SkyAI, formerly known as Sharps Technology, removes a significant amount of Solana from the corporate treasury market. The tender offer retains a $3-per-share price, despite challenges from Bastion. Solana’s price at the time of the report hovered near $105.

Key Takeaways

The sale of Solana by SkyAI appears to indicate a shift in confidence regarding Solana’s future potential.
Current market pricing suggests reduced confidence in Solana reaching $190 in the near term, with a noticeable decline in YES pricing across several prediction markets.
The tender offer and the cash position retained by SkyAI suggest a strategic repositioning away from Solana.

What to Watch
Watch for any further announcements from SkyAI or Bastion regarding the tender offer and share price challenges. Additionally, observe Solana’s price movement and market reactions to gauge sentiment changes. Developments in Solana’s ecosystem, such as network upgrades or regulatory changes, could also influence market perceptions and pricing outcomes.

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Rome Protocol has published connection details for its Hadrian testnet, giving developers a USDC-funded environment to try Ethereum-style applications inside Solana, while its documentation separately lists a mainnet network called Rubicon.

Summary

Rome’s Hadrian testnet runs on Solana Devnet, while its documentation separately lists Rubicon as mainnet. Compound v3 and Aave v3 implementations remain reference applications, without confirmed official protocol migrations. Hadrian uses test USDC for gas, with transaction pricing controlled through configurable operator settings. Rome reports a Halborn audit, while its documentation lists Ethereum compatibility and execution limits. Rome Protocol’s Oct. 18 post identifies Hadrian as a testnet running on Solana Devnet, with chain ID 200010, an RPC endpoint, an explorer, and instructions for obtaining test USDC. The supplied screenshot directs developers to Circle’s faucet and a bridge interface to fund their wallets.

The project’s developer documentation lists Rubicon separately as mainnet, with chain ID 7531 and a different RPC endpoint. Its introductory page describes Rubicon as using real USDC, distinguishing the production environment from Hadrian’s testing assets.

Rome EVM runs Solidity code within Solana Rome’s execution documentation describes an Ethereum Virtual Machine implemented as a Solana program. A proxy receives signed Ethereum-style transactions, checks them through an offchain emulator, and packages their instructions for execution by Solana validators.

According to the architecture described by the project, Solidity contracts can call native Solana programs through cross-program invocation, or CPI. Developers can use familiar Ethereum tools while their contracts execute within Solana’s runtime.

The documentation describes shared application state between EVM and Solana users. Its statement that no bridge is needed concerns interactions inside that environment; Hadrian’s funding instructions separately direct users to a bridge when bringing test USDC into the network.

Rome’s execution guide distinguishes two processing modes. Operations that fit within one Solana transaction use atomic execution, where the complete transaction succeeds or reverts together.

For more demanding operations, the same guide describes iterative execution across several Solana transactions. Accounts are locked during processing, and cached effects are committed at the end. The project lists a 160-step session limit and restrictions on which Solana program calls can use that mode.

Solana’s transaction capacity has been the subject of separate network changes. In an Aug. 30 report, Jacob Creech outlined a planned move from 1,232-byte transactions to a 4,096-byte format, as crypto.news previously reported. The announcement scheduled Transaction V1 for Sept. 9 and treated slot-time reductions and Alpenglow as separate upgrades.

Compound and Aave implementations remain reference applications Rome’s Hadrian guide names Uniswap, Compound and Aave as reference applications validated first on the testnet.

The project’s Aerarium repository describes a Compound v3 lending application with two wallet routes sharing one lending pool. One route accepts Ethereum-style signed transactions through MetaMask; the other uses Phantom and a Solana-derived identity without requiring an Ethereum key.

According to that repository, both routes access the same Comet market, covering USDC deposits, collateral deposits, borrowing, repayments, and withdrawals. The listed application address uses a devnet domain. GitHub

Rome’s Aave interface repository explicitly calls the product a demo and places it on Hadrian. Its accompanying contract repository describes a fork of Aave’s code.

Those materials establish how Rome presents its implementations. They do not establish that either lending protocol’s governing organization has approved a production deployment or moved existing user positions to Rome.

Rome has pursued other financial applications through partnerships. In March 2025, the project announced work with KiiChain on tokenized assets and cross-chain payment finance for Latin America. Executives described plans involving real estate, agricultural commodities and access to Solana liquidity.

USDC gas payments depend on operator configuration Hadrian’s network guide specifies USDC as its gas token and identifies Circle’s Solana Devnet USDC mint. Developers funding from Solana need test USDC and some devnet SOL, according to the guide.

Circle’s faucet supports both Solana Devnet and Ethereum Sepolia. The provider describes faucet tokens as testing assets without real-world value and currently lists a distribution of 20 test USDC per request, subject to its limits.

Rome’s application-chain documentation allows an operator to select an SPL token for gas payments and route transaction-fee revenue to an application treasury.

The same documentation describes a pricing service that converts the chosen gas token against SOL for underlying Solana transaction costs. Its configuration can draw prices from Meteora pools or a Pyth/Hermes fallback.

Rome’s constraints page lists configurable minimum gas prices and a proxy-level multiplier. The published framework therefore describes configurable pricing, without establishing one universal dollar cost for every application transaction.

Audit and compatibility claims carry defined limits Rome’s EVM repository identifies a mainnet program and says Halborn audited it. The repository provides instructions for rebuilding the program and comparing it with the deployed binary, with build-time and commit-hash metadata masked during comparison.

The project’s compatibility documentation lists differences from Ethereum, including disabled modular-exponentiation functionality and gas behavior that does not reproduce Ethereum’s per-operation schedule.

The constraints page says Rome transactions must declare the Solana accounts they touch before execution. It lists a 64-address transaction cap and approximately 1.4 million compute units per transaction. The guide recommends measuring actual Solana compute consumption from transaction receipts because the EVM gas-used figure does not faithfully represent that resource use.

Its mainnet deployment table names a Squads multisignature wallet as upgrade authority.

Separate interoperability projects have targeted institutional markets. In August, Interstice Digital announced a cross-chain swap engine linking Canton with Ethereum, Solana and Robinhood Chain. FalconX supplies liquidity, while Interstice said it does not hold customer assets or execute transactions on users’ behalf.

Germany’s Sparkassen savings bank network launched cryptocurrency trading on Monday, allowing customers to buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, and Polygon. The service is being rolled out through DekaBank and will be launched slowly in the participating savings banks, albeit with restrictions on transfers to personal wallets.

Sparkassen Launches Five Cryptocurrencies Through Banking App Under certain conditions, the Sparkassen customers of DekaBank can trade five cryptocurrencies directly via the existing banking application. The offering is named “Krypto – powered by Deka,” and it enables trading in BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, and POL.

The service can be used in the investment part of the Sparkasse app without the need for a separate securities account. Each transaction costs €0.99, although additional costs arise from the difference between buying and selling prices.

The launch comes after a series of initiatives by German banks to bring on-board cryptocurrency trading to existing customer accounts. DekaBank has created the Sparkassen service, and DZ Bank has backed up a separate rollout amongst Germany’s cooperative banks.

DekaBank is custodian of cryptocurrencies on its own wallet infrastructure and participates in trading arrangements with Börse Stuttgart. Users will have the ability to see their cryptocurrency assets in addition to various other monetary products and services in the current application.

DekaBank Restricts Crypto Withdrawals to Approved Providers While it is possible to buy cryptocurrencies at Sparkassen, they cannot be transferred directly to private hardware wallets. DekaBank maintains the private keys, and only specific cryptocurrency service providers are allowed to make transfers.

The agreement involves customers having to trust that DekaBank will keep their digital assets safe and handle their permitted withdrawals. However, the restrictions do not prevent users from selling their cryptocurrencies through the banking application.

The service is aimed at adult customers who make it on their own, and Sparkassen will not give investment advice on cryptocurrencies. DekaBank also cautions investors that the value of digital assets could be volatile with a potential loss of investment.

The custody is part of a broader trend across German financial institutions, including Deutsche Bank’s cryptocurrency custody plans. These services are regulated under EU laws, such as the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation.

Sparkassen Plans Wider Crypto Trading Rollout Into 2027 More than 230 Sparkassen institutions have expressed interest in introducing cryptocurrency trading, according to German banking representatives. Each savings bank, however, will determine on its own if and when it will provide the service.

Around 30 to 40 institutions can join monthly, said Joachim Schmalzl, an executive board member of the German Savings Banks Association. The group is targeting the first half of 2027 for the largest number of interested banks to be connected.

The first phase is limited to the participating institutions and not nationwide through Germany’s savings banking network. Before opening a cryptocurrency account, customers should therefore inquire whether their local Sparkasse has switched on the service.

The expansion comes after the banking group’s earlier stance on digital assets. Sparkassen had previously been against the retail trading of cryptocurrencies due to concerns about price volatility and losses by investors.

The group is still pushing traditional securities and savings products as a way to build up long-term wealth, even with the introduction of cryptocurrency trading.

Solana had a stronger third quarter in 2026. Revenue, transactions, trading volume and tokenized assets all grew compared with the second quarter.

This article collects the main Solana statistics from Q3 and September 2026. The figures come from Blockworks, the Solana Foundation, Solana Compass, Castle Labs, RWA.xyz and other reports.

Each section covers one part of the network, from application revenue to price forecasts. The numbers show growth, and they also show where the risks sit.

Sources define their metrics in different ways, so totals for the same topic can differ. Where that happens, this article names the source and explains the gap.

Solana Q3 2026 at a Glance Table of Contents

Blockworks published its Q3 2026 Solana report on October 15, 2026. It showed real economic value (REV) rising 48% from the second quarter to $75.7 million. This was the first quarterly increase in REV since Q4 2024.

Application revenue also rose 48%, to $299.1 million. That is the highest quarterly total since Q3 2025.

Trading measures grew as well. Decentralized exchange (DEX) volume rose 23% to $197.2 billion. Tokenized equity trading reached a quarterly record of $7.1 billion, up 40% from Q2.

Metric Q3 2026 Change vs Q2 2026 Real economic value (REV) $75.7 million +48% Application revenue $299.1 million +48% DEX volume $197.2 billion +23% Tokenized equity trading volume $7.1 billion +40% Completed non-vote transactions 8.78 billion +23.3% Sources: Blockworks (REV, application revenue, DEX volume, tokenized equities); Solana Compass (transactions).

REV measures selected value from network activity, such as transaction fees and priority fees. Application revenue is different, because apps earn it and not the Solana protocol. The two figures should not be added together.

Figure 1: Solana growth in Q3 2026 compared with Q2 2026 across five measures. Solana Application Revenue Statistics Applications on Solana earned $299.1 million in Q3 2026. That is 48% more than in Q2. The number counts what apps earn from their users.

The growth built up month by month. Application revenue was $75.4 million in July, $106.5 million in August and $117.1 million in September. September was the strongest month since January 2026.

REV moved in the same direction. Blockworks reported $30.1 million of REV in September alone. That is about 40% of the $75.7 million earned in the whole quarter.

Application revenue is not the same as SOL token revenue. An app can earn more money without that money flowing to SOL holders. The token gains value through transaction fees and other network-level links.

Month Application revenue Change from prior month July 2026 $75.4 million Not available August 2026 $106.5 million +41.2% September 2026 $117.1 million +10.0% Source: Blockworks. Monthly changes are calculated from the reported figures.

Figure 2: Solana application revenue rose each month in Q3 2026. Which Apps Earn the Most Revenue on Solana

Revenue is spread across several apps, but one app leads by a wide margin. Pump generated $121.5 million in Q3, about 41% of all application revenue.

Collector Crypt followed with $35 million. Fomo earned $24.9 million, Pacifica earned $18 million and Axiom earned $16.2 million. Together these five apps earned $215.6 million, or about 72% of the total.

Growth was not limited to the biggest names. Fomo’s revenue quadrupled from Q2. Axiom’s revenue grew 65%.

Still, revenue sits with a small group of platforms. If one of them loses users, the total could change quickly. Analysts often watch this kind of concentration as a risk.

App Q3 2026 revenue Share of total Pump $121.5 million 40.6% Collector Crypt $35.0 million 11.7% Fomo $24.9 million 8.3% Pacifica $18.0 million 6.0% Axiom $16.2 million 5.4% All other apps $83.5 million 27.9% Source: Blockworks. Shares and the ‘All other apps’ line are calculated from the $299.1 million total.

Figure 3: Pump earned about 41% of Solana application revenue in Q3 2026. Solana Transaction Statistics Solana completed 3.18 billion non-vote transactions in September 2026, according to Solana Compass. It was the third monthly record in a row. The Q3 total was 8.78 billion, which is 23.3% above the 7.13 billion in Q2.

Non-vote means validator votes are left out. Votes are part of how the network reaches agreement. Leaving them out shows activity by users, apps and bots.

Blockworks analyst Sam Schubert counted about 3.2 billion successful non-vote transactions in September, up 7.5% from August. His Q3 total was 8.92 billion. That is 1.6% above the Solana Compass count, and both datasets show a record.

Schubert described Q3 as 18% above the prior quarterly high in his series. Solana Compass reports 23.3% because its data starts in December 2025 and it compares Q3 with Q2. The two percentages use different baselines.

Reverted transactions fell in September. A reverted transaction runs and then rolls back, often because a trader’s price limit was hit. These dropped 30%, from 2.19 billion in August to 1.52 billion in September.

As a result, the share of non-vote transactions that completed rose from 57.3% to 67.6%. Solana Compass treats completed transactions as the stricter test of work done for users. High counts can still include bots and short-term trading.

Measure August 2026 September 2026 Completed non-vote transactions 2.93 billion 3.18 billion Reverted non-vote transactions 2.19 billion 1.52 billion All non-vote transactions 5.12 billion 4.70 billion Completion rate 57.3% 67.6% Source: Solana Compass.

Figure 4: Completed non-vote transactions on Solana rose every month from May to September 2026. Solana DEX Volume Statistics Blockworks reported that DEX volume rose 23% in Q3 to $197.2 billion. The Solana Foundation put September DEX volume at $78.33 billion, up from $65.29 billion in August. That is a 20% rise.

Other sources give different totals. DefiLlama counted about $78 billion in September, based on the DEXs it lists. Solana Compass counted $184.1 billion of spot swaps over 1.17 billion trades, across 95 programs and more than 1.6 million markets.

The gap comes from method. Solana Compass counts every spot swap its tool sees, including circular and bot-driven trading. Bitquery classified $117.7 billion, or 58%, of Solana DEX volume from August 24 to September 22 as circular or bot-like.

Aggregators routed 27.1% of the September volume counted by Solana Compass. Readers who compare DEX figures should check which source and method sit behind each number.

Source Period Figure Blockworks Q3 2026 $197.2 billion Solana Foundation August 2026 $65.29 billion Solana Foundation September 2026 $78.33 billion DefiLlama September 2026 About $78 billion Solana Compass September 2026 $184.1 billion Bitquery (circular or bot-like) Aug 24 to Sep 22 $117.7 billion (58%) Figure 5: Solana DEX volume for September 2026 ranges from $78.3 billion to $184.1 billion, depending on the source. Solana Stablecoin Supply Statistics

The Solana Foundation’s September ecosystem report put stablecoin supply at a record $17.51 billion. Its payments review reported $17.3 billion on September 25.

Supply and transaction volume are different measures. Supply is the value of stablecoins on the network at one point in time. Volume is the value moved over a period, so supply can stay flat while volume changes a lot.

Traders use stablecoins to move between positions without converting back to cash. DeFi apps use them for lending, collateral and liquidity. Businesses use them to move dollars across borders and outside banking hours.

Payments news added to the picture in September. Column integrated stablecoins into its banking core, so businesses can convert between supported stablecoins and dollars on the same ledger used for ACH, wires and SWIFT.

Open USD also launched on Solana on September 30. Its reserves are held at BlackRock, Lead Bank and BNY.

Supply alone does not show how the money is used. Some balances sit idle or support leveraged trades. Transfer activity, active users and payment volume give a fuller view.

Figure 6: Stablecoin supply on Solana was about four times the value of its tokenized real-world assets in September 2026. Solana Tokenized Real-World Asset Statistics Castle Labs research shows Solana’s tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market grew from about $700 million to $4.3 billion in a year. That is a gain of about $3.6 billion, or 514%. The figures leave out conventional stablecoins such as USDC and USDT.

Ethereum is still much larger. Its tokenized asset base grew from $15.5 billion to $16.6 billion, a rise of 7.1%. Solana’s RWA market is now about 26% of Ethereum’s, up from about 4.5% a year earlier.

RWA.xyz data cited in an October 1 SEC filing by Forward Industries put Solana’s distributed RWA value at about $4.3 billion on September 30. That was up from more than $3.3 billion at the end of June, or roughly $1 billion in one quarter.

The Solana Foundation reported $4.6 billion across more than 3,000 assets. That is a different snapshot and may cover different assets.

Growth spans Treasuries, investment funds, equities, private credit and insurance products. OnRe’s tokenized reinsurance asset, ONyc, rose from $203.4 million on June 30 to $286.2 million on September 30.

Value changes can reflect new issuance, redemptions and price moves in the underlying assets. They are not the same as net investment inflows. Tokenized assets also depend on issuer obligations, custody and regulation.

Measure One year earlier October 2026 Change Solana tokenized RWA value $0.7 billion $4.3 billion +514% Ethereum tokenized asset value $15.5 billion $16.6 billion +7.1% Solana as a share of Ethereum About 4.5% About 26% Not applicable Source: Castle Labs, reported by FinanceFeeds.

Figure 7: Solana’s tokenized asset value grew far faster than Ethereum’s over the past year, from a much smaller base. Solana Tokenized Equities Statistics

Tokenized equities are shares of listed companies issued as tokens that can trade around the clock. Trading value on Solana reached a record $7.1 billion in Q3 2026, up 40% from Q2.

The Solana Foundation’s October 6 report said tokenized stock supply reached about $684 million in September. That was up 47% over three weeks. Trading volume for the month was about $4.4 billion.

Holder counts vary by provider. The Foundation reported one million holder wallets. Token Terminal data shared on October 1 showed more than 1.2 million wallets, a new high.

Crypto Briefing also reported more than 1.2 million holder wallets across the ecosystem, including Raydium and xStocks. The report said regulation, ETF approvals and partnerships will shape future growth.

SolanaFloor, citing Blockworks, reported that Solana carries more than 32% of daily tokenized equity trading volume across chains. BNB Chain holds 27% and Robinhood Chain holds 25%. The xStocks platform has issued 74% of Solana’s tokenized equities.

This market is young. Trading volume can rise and fall quickly with market mood, so a record quarter does not guarantee a repeat.

Metric Figure Source Q3 2026 trading value $7.1 billion (+40%) Blockworks September trading volume About $4.4 billion Solana Foundation September token supply About $684 million Solana Foundation Holder wallets 1 million to 1.2 million Foundation; Token Terminal Share of xStocks in Solana equities 74% SolanaFloor Figure 8: Solana carries more than 32% of daily tokenized equity trading volume, ahead of BNB Chain and Robinhood Chain. SOL Price and Market Value Statistics SOL traded between about $102 and $105 in mid-October 2026. The KuCoin ticker showed $104.72 on October 16. 24/7 Wall St. reported a price near $102 and a market value of about $60.2 billion on October 15.

October began near $118, peaked at about $124 and fell as low as $102. The price is still about 64% below the all-time high of $293.31, set on November 6, 2021. Solana traded near $149 in January 2026.

XRP traded at $1.31 with a market value of about $82.6 billion. That put it roughly $22 billion ahead of Solana. According to 24/7 Wall St., Solana would need to gain about 37.3% against XRP to pass it.

Recent moves against XRP have been mixed. Over 30 days, Solana gained 2.7% while XRP fell 5.6%. Over the last week, Solana fell 9.8% and XRP fell 6.3%.

Fund flows have been weak this month. SoSoValue data showed US Solana funds had withdrawals in nine of ten October sessions. Earlier, US Solana ETFs took in money for 14 straight weeks, their longest run yet.

The price also fell 5.1% to $102.19 after a September CPI reading of 3.7%, which was higher than expected. A network upgrade called Alpenglow is set for October 21 and aims for about 150 millisecond finality. A faster network does not automatically mean a higher price.

Measure Figure SOL price, October 15 to 16 About $102 to $105 SOL market value About $60.2 billion XRP market value About $82.6 billion Gap to XRP About $22 billion Gain needed against XRP About 37.3% All-time high (November 6, 2021) $293.31 Sources: KuCoin, 24/7 Wall St., CoinStats.

Figure 9: SOL fell from a peak near $124 to about $102 in October 2026 and remains far below its 2021 record. Solana Price Forecast Statistics Price forecasts are estimates, not data about what will happen. The CoinStats forecast page lists projections from banks, research firms and software models. They vary widely.

Standard Chartered, as reported by CoinDesk on February 3, 2026, targets $250 in 2026, $400 in 2027, $700 in 2028, $1,200 in 2029 and $2,000 in 2030. A Finder panel put the end of 2030 at $892. Model-based tools are lower, with CoinCodex at $341.66, DappRadar at $146.41 and Binance at $122.43 for 2030.

For the end of 2026, CoinCodex estimated $140.24 and a Finder panel averaged $182. Changelly gave a 2026 range of $100.14 to $123.59.

The gap reflects different assumptions. Bank models assume Solana wins a growing share of payments, stablecoin transfers and tokenized assets. Technical models lean more on past price behavior.

CoinStats also set out its own scenarios. For 2027 it gave a range of $100 to $400, with an average of $250. For 2030 it gave a range of $250 to $2,000, with an average of $900.

At $2,000 per SOL, Solana’s market value would be about $1.175 trillion using today’s circulating supply of 587 million SOL. CoinStats says that is about 17.8 times the market value it used in its report.

Source Forecast Date published Standard Chartered $250 (2026), $2,000 (2030) Feb 3, 2026 Finder panel $892 (end of 2030) Apr 28, 2025 VanEck $9.81 bear, $335 base, $3,211.28 bull (2030) Oct 27, 2023 Stealthex $180 (2026), $800 (2030) Aug 13, 2026 CoinCodex $140.24 (2026), $341.66 (2030) Sep 17, 2026 Changelly $100.14 to $123.59 (2026) Sep 16, 2026 DappRadar $111.16 (2026), $146.41 (2030) Aug 28, 2026 Binance $122.43 (2030) Sep 17, 2026 Source: CoinStats price prediction page. Older forecasts may no longer reflect their authors’ views.

Figure 10: Solana 2030 price forecasts range from about $122 to $2,000, depending on the source. What the Solana Numbers Show Solana’s Q3 2026 data shows growth across several areas. REV and application revenue both rose 48%, transactions set records and stablecoin supply reached $17.51 billion.

Tokenized assets grew from $0.7 billion to $4.3 billion in a year. Tokenized equity trading hit $7.1 billion in the quarter.

The same data shows limits. One app earned about 41% of application revenue, and application revenue does not flow directly to SOL holders. Transaction and volume counts also depend on how each source measures them.

The price tells a different story from the network data. SOL is down from its 2021 high and US Solana funds saw outflows for most of October.

Reports also separate three ideas that are easy to mix up. Application revenue shows what apps earn, protocol revenue shows what the network collects, and token demand shows what buyers pay for SOL. Each can move on its own.

Key items to watch include the October 21 Alpenglow upgrade, revenue spread across more apps, the staying power of stablecoin supply and fund flows. Broader market conditions will matter too.

This article is for information only and is not financial, legal or investment advice.

Sources Solana Q3 2026 Report: Revenue Jumps 48% as Stablecoin Supply Reaches $16.8B (KuCoin) Solana Logs Record 3.18B Completed Transactions in September 2026, Capping a Record Q3 (Solana Compass) Solana’s Tokenized Real-World Asset Market Surges From $700 Million to $4.3 Billion in One Year (FinanceFeeds) Solana Hits Record $7.1B in Tokenized Equities Volume in Q3 2026 (Crypto Briefing) Solana Is 37% Away From Passing XRP. Could It Happen by the End of 2026? (24/7 Wall St.) Solana (SOL) Price Prediction 2026-2030 (CoinStats)

solana coin

Circle has reportedly minted about 3.75 billion USDC on the Solana blockchain over the past seven days, according to data shared by @SolanaFloor on social media. This significant issuance represents gross minting and highlights the ongoing expansion of USDC liquidity on the Solana network. As of early October, Solana’s native USDC holdings were approximately $7.3 billion, constituting about 10% of the total USDC supply. This development suggests that Solana continues to be a key platform for stablecoin activity, supporting various applications in payments and decentralized finance (DeFi).

Key Takeaways The minting of 3.75 billion USDC on Solana suggests increased liquidity provision on the platform. This development appears consistent with scenarios that could support a rise in Solana’s price, as enhanced liquidity may drive demand. Market pricing implies moderate confidence in Solana reaching higher price targets, with some sub-markets reflecting this sentiment. What to Watch Markets will be monitoring any further increases in USDC minting on Solana and its potential impact on Solana’s price. Key indicators include regulatory developments, such as SEC decisions on spot-SOL ETFs, and technological milestones like the successful activation of Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade. These factors could influence market sentiment towards Solana’s price reaching or exceeding significant thresholds, such as $190, in October 2026.

Term Structure

Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h November 1 2026 0.6% — — View market → November 1 2026 3.9% — — View market → November 1 2026 15.5% — — View market → November 1 2026 4% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.4% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.9% — — View market → November 1 2026 1.4% — — View market → November 1 2026 1.8% — — View market → November 1 2026 1.5% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.1% — — View market → November 1 2026 8.5% — — View market → November 1 2026 0.4% — — View market → November 1 2026 2% — — View market → November 1 2026 55% — — View market →

12h05 ▪ 4 min read ▪ by Fenelon L.

Summarize this article with:

In one year, real-world tokenized assets on Solana increased from around 700 million to 4.3 billion dollars, according to Castle Labs. The network thus narrows the gap with Ethereum and now represents 26% of its tokenized value, compared to only 4.5% a year earlier. However, this growth has paused since last month.

In brief Solana reaches 4.3 billion dollars in tokenized assets, an increase of about 514% in twelve months. Ethereum retains the top spot with 16.6 billion dollars, but Solana is gradually closing the gap. Despite a stable overall value over thirty days, the number of holders and transfer volumes continue to increase. Solana narrows gap with Ethereum At the end of September, tokenized assets on Solana reached a record $4.6 billion, according to rwa.xyz. In its report, Castle Labs reviews this spectacular growth, which multiplied the total value by more than six times in twelve months.

More precisely, the increase from 700 million to 4.3 billion dollars represents an increase of about 514%, not 600%. As the figures are rounded, this estimate remains indicative.

At the same time, Ethereum grew more modestly, rising from 15.5 to 16.6 billion dollars, about 7%. As a result, Solana now accounts for 26% of Ethereum’s tokenized value, compared to 4.5% a year earlier. The gap remains significant since the rival network still weighs nearly four times as much. Nevertheless, Solana is clearly gaining ground.

Stable value, but more activity According to data from rwa.xyz, Solana shows approximately 4.39 billion dollars in tokenized assets as of mid-October. However, their value slightly declined over the past thirty days. In other words, most of the annual growth now seems behind the network, at least temporarily.

Activity remains dynamic though. In one month, the number of holders jumped 46%, exceeding 907,000 addresses. Meanwhile, transfer volume increased by 47%, reaching 9.09 billion dollars.

This evolution shows that adoption continues despite the stagnation of total value. Furthermore, at the beginning of September, Solana led net flows of tokenized real-world assets. The network notably hosts tokenized financial securities, credit products, and yield-generating instruments.

Is tokenization enough to support SOL? This growth does not guarantee a rise in the SOL price. Indeed, the increase in tokenized asset value does not automatically translate to purchases of the native token. What follows will notably depend on the arrival of new issuers, available liquidity, and application development.

Tokenized stocks illustrate this mixed dynamic. Their value rose from 63 to 455 million dollars in one year, after a peak of 540 million in early September. They thus remain below their recent peak.

Moreover, Castle Labs estimates application revenues at 193 million dollars over thirty days, while other calculation methods suggest 163 million.

Finally, Solana must contend with ongoing competition, notably from other blockchains gaining ground, as highlighted by this analysis of BNB Chain versus Ethereum and Solana. To maintain its progress, the network will need to attract new players and retain those who already trust it.

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Fenelon L.

Passionné par le Bitcoin, j'aime explorer les méandres de la blockchain et des cryptos et je partage mes découvertes avec la communauté. Mon rêve est de vivre dans un monde où la vie privée et la liberté financière sont garanties pour tous, et je crois fermement que Bitcoin est l'outil qui peut rendre cela possible.

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and should not be taken as investment advice. Do your own research before taking any investment decisions.

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18 October 2026 | 11:50 At about 03:43 UTC on August 12, a bad internet route began spreading from TeraSwitch’s data centre in Miami.

According to Metrika’s analysis of the incident, around 90 Solana validators holding roughly 29% of staked SOL lost connectivity, and blocks took up to about 30 minutes to finalise, against the usual 13 seconds.

Solana never went down. Blocks kept coming, and an uptime chart would have shown an ordinary day. On Wednesday, October 21, the network switches to Alpenglow, an upgrade that targets finality of roughly 150 milliseconds, but nothing in it touches the hosting problem. A research report published on October 16 by Fidelity’s FCAT unit puts the largest hosting network at about 29% of stake, close to the share Metrika saw go offline.

What happened on August 12 Solana finalises a block, the point at which a transaction can no longer be reversed, only while more than two-thirds of staked SOL is voting. That normally takes about 13 seconds. With roughly 71% of stake still online on August 12, the network stayed above the line, but only just. Metrika puts the offline share at 28.83%, against a 33.34% point at which finalisation stops chain-wide.

August 12: share of staked SOL offline, against the finality-halt line

Offline: 28.83%
Headroom: about 4.5 points
Finalisation stops: 33.34%
Online: about 71%

Source: Metrika.

Metrika says another four to five percentage points of stake on the affected routes would have meant a network-wide halt needing coordinated recovery. The fault began in TeraSwitch’s Miami facility and spread to validator infrastructure in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Singapore and Tokyo, and in most cases the affected validators’ backup systems never switched on.

TeraSwitch fixed the fault about ten minutes after diagnosing it, and traffic was flowing again by 04:16 UTC, 33 minutes after it began. Validators recovered over the following 40 minutes. In that time, the share of scheduled slots producing no block jumped above 32%, from under 1%. Non-vote transactions per second fell from roughly 1,100–1,300 to below 300. For about half an hour no blocks finalised at all, and the backlog then cleared in a burst averaging around 1,600 seconds from production to finality.

The one number that didn’t move was uptime, which held at 100% because the chain never stopped producing blocks. For about half an hour, though, nobody could say when a payment would become irreversible. Metrika, which sells a digital-asset risk-management platform and draws on its own indicators here, treats finality delay, not downtime, as the event that matters to anyone settling funds on Solana.

What a stalled chain would and wouldn’t mean The risk FCAT describes is stalled finality and possible censorship. A coalition holding more than one-third of stake could stop the rest from reaching the two-thirds needed for finality, the report says, but it would not gain unrestricted control over user assets or the ability to rewrite finalised transactions. A hosting fault that took out the same share of stake would halt finality without anyone attacking anything.

That share is not hard to reach. FCAT counts roughly 20 validator identities (18 in another passage) holding more than a third of stake, and says that third sits in two countries, on two hosting networks and on two base client implementations. Those are vote accounts, not independent organisations: Figment, for one, runs two of the top five validators in that group. FCAT’s overall verdict is positive, citing more than two years without a major mainnet outage, vote success averaging about 99.7% in 2026 and a software stack that is slowly diversifying. It lists concentration as the thing to keep watching. FCAT is Fidelity’s applied-technology research unit and runs a small Solana validator of its own.

Two months on, the share is still about 29% FCAT’s October snapshot puts the largest hosting network at about 29% of stake. The two figures measure different things, stake offline during a fault and a network’s share of all stake, but they land in the same place. FCAT says the Solana Foundation had already been working to reduce TeraSwitch’s dominance. Here is how its numbers break down, from the people running validators to the code they run.

18-20

OPERATORS

validator identities hold over a third of stake

Vote accounts, not independent organisations. Figment runs two of the group’s top five.

~40%

LOCATION

of stake in Frankfurt and Amsterdam

An IP-geolocation estimate that FCAT says may be inaccurate. About 59% sits in Germany, the Netherlands and the US.

~29%

NETWORK PROVIDER

of stake on one hosting network

October snapshot. Validators in different cities can share a provider, and validators in one city can use different ones.

~63%

SOFTWARE

of stake ran Jito-based software in Q3

Another 26% ran Harmonic. Most configurations still share Agave code underneath, so one bug there could hit them together.

Source: FCAT, The State of Solana: Network Health and Resilience (October 2026).

Validators cluster for a reason. Latency rewards being close to other nodes, FCAT notes, and specialist hosts such as TeraSwitch and Latitude build hardware for Solana’s workload. Operators do have protections: failovers, backup power, and private networks such as DoubleZero that reduce reliance on the public internet. The Foundation also set up an incident-response network, SIRN, in early 2026. On August 12, though, most backups never switched on.

The Foundation’s limit reaches about 4% of stake The Solana Foundation’s delegation programme sets the main rule. Since May 1, 2026, validators that want Foundation stake have had to sit on a hosting network under a 25% ceiling and in a data centre under 15%. A validator that fails loses its Foundation delegation until it passes again.

The limits took effect three months before the August fault, and by FCAT’s October snapshot the largest network was still above the ceiling. The programme’s reach is the other half of the problem. As of Q3 it delegated to about 51% of validators, but those delegations amounted to about 4% of active stake. The rule gives validators a reason to diversify, but it doesn’t govern the rest of the stake.

Largest hosting network’s share of stake (October)

About 29%. The black line marks the Foundation’s 25% ceiling.

Stake delegated by the Foundation’s programme (Q3)

About 4%.

Both bars use the same scale, 0-40% of staked SOL. Sources: FCAT, Solana Foundation.

What Alpenglow fixes, and what it doesn’t Alpenglow goes live on mainnet in epoch 1064, which Solana says starts around 15:00 UTC on Wednesday, October 21. Anza, the team behind the Agave client, has said about 14:50. The old voting system keeps running for the first 5,000 slots, about 18 minutes, and the new one takes over at slot 459,653,000. Finality is meant to drop from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds, a figure Solana describes as an expectation, not a constant. Wallets and apps keep working as they do today.

It does nothing for the hosting problem. A faster vote shortens how long agreement takes, but nothing on Solana’s upgrade page changes where validators run or which provider connects them.

For now it also narrows software diversity. Validators must run Agave, Jito-Solana or Harmonic Salsa on a release built on Agave 4.3.0. Firedancer and Frankendancer aren’t supported during the migration, and Solana’s page gives no date for when they will be. Firedancer is the independent codebase FCAT calls Solana’s most significant move toward independent client diversity. Validators must also hold at least 0.8 SOL above the rent-exempt minimum in their vote account, or they won’t vote or produce blocks in the next epoch.

BEFORE

Now to about 14:50-15:00 UTC, October 21

Firedancer and Frankendancer operators move to an Agave-based client. Every voting validator holds 0.8 SOL above rent-exempt in its vote account.

AT THE SWITCH

Epoch 1064 begins

The old voting system runs for the first 5,000 slots, about 18 minutes. Alpenglow takes over at slot 459,653,000.

AFTER

What changes for data

Vote transactions leave blocks, so transaction counts fall. Confirmed and finalized become the same state. Participation data moves to block-footer certificates.

Monitoring changes too. Metrika’s analysis treats votes per block as the closest indicator of how near the network is to the finality line, because votes are ordinary transactions carried in blocks. Alpenglow takes votes out of blocks, and Solana’s migration notes say anything that measures validator participation by parsing vote transactions will need a new source, because that data moves into certificates in the block footer. Reported transaction counts will also fall without any drop in real activity.

What to check this week If you stake SOL: look up where your validator is hosted before you delegate. Validators.app, the source both FCAT and the Foundation use, tracks stake by hosting network and data centre. A validator on the largest network shares the August risk.

If you build on Solana: expect transaction-count and TPS dashboards to drop on Wednesday with no change in real activity. Keep reading at confirmed until Alpenglow is live, then move to finalized, as Solana’s migration notes advise. Before activation, finalized still means a wait of about 12.8 seconds. Re-check any timeout or retry tuned to that delay, and track time to finality alongside uptime.

If you run a validator: if you use Firedancer or Frankendancer, switch to an Agave-based client before epoch 1064, and check that the vote account holds the 0.8 SOL.

After Wednesday, two numbers are worth watching: whether the largest hosting network’s share falls below the Foundation’s 25% ceiling, and when Firedancer is supported again. Neither is on Wednesday’s schedule.

This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.

Author

Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem. To support his analysis, Kosta actively leverages on-chain data and metrics from leading platforms such as Santiment, Glassnode, and CryptoQuant, enabling deeper, evidence-based market insights. He believes in the power of transparency and the data that underpins the blockchain ecosystem. His academic background in Marketing Management from Denmark further complements his analytical approach, adding a strong understanding of communication strategy and content positioning to his work.