Solana 2026: Ecosystem and Market Strategy Research

How Solana transforms its technological advantages into ecosystem growth. Low fees and high speed lower the barriers to use, applications meet transaction demands, and community and marketing expand reach, forming a closed loop that attracts builders. With a focus on tokenized assets, payments, and AI, its long-term challenges lie in dependence on speculation, competition from major public chains, and how to better return ecosystem profits to SOL holders.

Written by: JiaYi

As of October 24, 2026, Solana's on-chain transaction volume and application revenue rank first among all public chains, also leading in the x402 AI agent payment sector.

In nearly all other metrics, Solana ranks in the top three, including RWA value and the number of holders, stablecoin supply, and total locked value (TVL).

The number of tokenized stock holders on Solana has reached 1.57 million, growing by 56.5% in the past month. The stablecoin supply peaked at $17.4 billion in late September, nearly five times that of two years ago; RWA value also hit a new high of $4.6 billion.

This report is authored by Y Strategy, a market company focused on the future direction of the crypto market. We study Solana as a market entry system: where demand comes from, how products reach users, what metrics the market learns to focus on, and why builders continuously choose to launch products here.

The core question we focus on is: how these elements reinforce each other, and which parts of Solana's practices can be practically referenced by other ecosystems. Throughout the report, we will distinguish its existing activities from interpretations of the strategies behind them.

On Solana, the cost of a transaction is far less than 1 cent, and confirmation time is well under 1 second. This combination makes Solana the main battlefield for on-chain transactions, with trading targets gradually expanding from meme coins and stablecoins to tokenized stocks. On October 24, Solana processed approximately 145 million non-voting transactions; on-chain, it holds about $15.8 billion in stablecoins, along with some of the most well-known applications in the crypto space, including Phantom, Jupiter, Pump, and Raydium.

Data sources: DefiLlama, RWA.xyz, Artemis, Solscan, and Blockworks, as of October 24, 2026.

Key Moments in the Past Few Years

• 2019------Solana completed a $20 million financing led by Multicoin Capital.
• 2020------Mainnet test version launched. $SOL was priced at $0.22 in the public auction on CoinList, and for several months after TGE, the trading price remained below $1.
• 2021------Solana Labs completed approximately $314 million in financing, led by a16z and Polychain Capital. $SOL price reached $259.
• 2022------Wormhole cross-chain bridge was attacked, resulting in a loss of $320 million. FTX and Alameda collapsed and entered bankruptcy proceedings, with the large amounts of SOL they held dragging the coin price down to about $10.
• 2023------A year of rebuilding. Solana continued to fund builders during the bear market and launched core upgrades.
• 2024------Pump launched, marking the beginning of the meme coin era. Solana began to become the public chain with the largest on-chain trading volume.
• January 2025------$TRUMP meme coin was issued on Solana. SOL reached an all-time high of $293.
• October 2025------$BSOL was listed, becoming the first Solana spot ETF in the U.S.
• 2026------In March, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jointly classified SOL as a digital commodity. BlackRock applied to issue tokenized fund shares on Solana, and Western Union launched a dollar token on-chain, with wrapped XRP also officially launched.

Familiar with Solana? You can skip directly to the second part.

Part One: Where Solana Stands Today

In the 30 days leading up to October 24, 2026, Solana's decentralized exchange (DEX) had an average daily trading volume of approximately $2.2 billion, with users paying about $14.4 million daily to use Solana and its applications, of which network fees accounted for only about 6% (DefiLlama).

Solana's Application Revenue Leads All Public Chains

In terms of application revenue, which is the share of fees received by apps, Solana leads all public chains. In the past 30 days, its application revenue was approximately $158 million: 2.1 times that of Hyperliquid, 2.9 times that of Ethereum, 6.1 times that of BNB Chain, and 7.5 times that of Robinhood Chain (DefiLlama, as of October 24, 2026). The low transaction fees on Solana mean that more value is reflected on the application side.

Architecture: How Solana Operates Today

Solana processes about 167 million non-voting transactions daily, equivalent to about 1,930 transactions per second (Solscan, as of October 24, 2026). This scale of processing, combined with the fixed base fees set by the protocol, keeps transaction costs low.

Recent upgrades:

• Faster block times------reduced from 0.4 seconds to 0.25 seconds, then to 0.2 seconds; a block time of 200 milliseconds has been effective on the mainnet since October 9, 2026.
• Larger transaction capacity------the amount of data a single transaction can hold has expanded to 3.3 times the original (September 2026).
• Firedancer------a new validator client developed by Jump (May 2026).

All these upgrades serve the market that Solana hopes to support. Whether it is AI agents making payments far below 1 cent or tokenized assets requiring millisecond-level settlements, the blockchain must have the capability of financial infrastructure, which is exactly Solana's goal.

Who Supports Solana

Solana has raised over $330 million in multiple rounds of disclosed financing, with investors including a16z, Polychain, and Multicoin; this also includes a $1.7 million public token sale conducted on CoinList in March 2020.

Its institutional supporters are no longer limited to venture capital firms. SOL spot ETFs are currently trading in the U.S., including BSOL, GSOL, FSOL, VSOL, and TSOL; companies like Forward Industries and Upexi also hold SOL on their balance sheets.

Part Two: Where is the Activity Concentrated?

Solana's Ecosystem Landscape in 2026

Transactions are at the core of the Solana ecosystem, but this ecosystem covers far more than just transactions. Major categories include:

• Token issuance platforms (Launchpads)------Pump, StonkFun
• Decentralized exchanges (DEX)------Raydium, Meteora, PumpSwap, Orca
• Aggregators and trading terminals------Jupiter, Axiom
• Perpetual contracts------Phoenix, Jupiter Perps, GMTrade, Pacifica
• Lending------Kamino, Jupiter Lend
• Wallets------Phantom, Solflare, and wallets directly built into applications
• Real-world assets (RWA) and tokenized stocks------xStocks, Backpack Securities, Ondo, PreStocks
• Stablecoins/payments/digital banking------USDC, USDT, PYUSD, Solana Pay, KAST, Avici
• Others------Collectible Crypt, decentralized physical infrastructure network DePIN (Helium), staking (Jito, Sanctum)

The most popular project types are trading infrastructures, including launchpads, exchanges, and trading terminals. Ranked by revenue, the top five applications are Pump, Collector Crypt, Axiom, StonkFun, and fomo. Four of these are token trading applications, while Collector Crypt is a tokenized collectible trading market (DefiLlama, past 30 days data as of October 24, 2026).

The diversity of trading targets exceeds the impression of Solana being known for meme coins. In the third quarter of 2026, the SOL-stablecoin trading pair accounted for the highest share of DEX trading volume, approximately 40%; meme coins accounted for about 30%; the remainder was made up of stablecoin exchanges, external tokens, project tokens, and tokenized assets. The scale of tokenized assets is still relatively small, but their trading volume has set new highs for seven consecutive quarters, reaching $8.1 billion in the third quarter; in September alone, it reached $4.9 billion, about three times that of August, and was the highest trading volume month to date (Blockworks).

2026 January to September, Solana spot trading volume by trading pair type

Solana's Heavyweight Applications

All data in this section comes from DefiLlama, covering the past 30 days as of October 24, 2026.

1. Pump------Achieves one-click token issuance through joint curves: no coding or liquidity configuration required, tokens are issued with an immediate trading market. Tokens that gain enough attention will

According to revenue, Pump is the largest application on Solana: in the past 30 days, pump.fun and PumpSwap generated approximately $62 million in total revenue, accounting for nearly 40% of the total revenue across the chain. Among all blockchains, it is also the third highest revenue-generating application, following stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle.

2. Phantom------The most widely used Solana wallet, its onboarding process allows users outside the crypto space to truly get started. Features like swapping, staking, perpetual contracts, prediction markets, and purchase buttons are all built-in. It takes a small fee from swap transactions within the wallet and has not issued a token.

Phantom's revenue exceeds that of any other wallet on any blockchain: in the past 30 days, it generated $7.1 million, about double MetaMask's $3.6 million.

3. Jupiter------The default trading entry on Solana, routing orders between various exchanges to obtain the best prices; it now also offers perpetual contracts, lending, and liquidity staking.

In the past 30 days, the trading volume routed by Jupiter accounted for about 47% of Solana's aggregator trading volume and approximately 19% of the total chain's aggregator trading volume ($13.1 billion). This makes it the largest aggregator globally, operating solely on Solana.

4. Raydium------Tokens that "graduate" from token issuance platforms enter real liquidity pools on this exchange. Its LaunchLab product also supports other issuance platforms, including StonkFun.

In the past 30 days, Raydium processed $6.5 billion in trading volume and retained $3.7 million in revenue, as most fees go to liquidity providers and token issuance platforms. About 60% of this revenue ($2.24 million) is used to repurchase RAY.

These four applications together cover the mainstream path from project discovery to liquidity formation. Phantom serves as the entry point, Pump is responsible for creating and trading new tokens, Jupiter handles order routing, and Raydium converts attention into tradable liquidity pools.

From Registration to First Trade in Under a Minute

In the past, going on-chain meant first registering an exchange account, completing identity verification (KYC), creating a separate wallet, saving a mnemonic phrase, and then transferring funds. Now, new users can log in with social accounts, pay with Apple Pay within applications like Moonshot, or directly recharge in Phantom using Phantom Cash, allowing them to start trading in under a minute. The wallet is automatically created in the background during registration, eliminating the need for separate setup.

Tokenization and Beyond: Solana's Direction in 2026

In the field of tokenized stocks, Solana has been a major trading venue. Until mid-2026, it accounted for the vast majority of on-chain spot trading volume. After that, competition in this area became more intense: Robinhood Chain and BNB Chain both launched stock trading venues this year, and trading volume has now spread across multiple chains. Solana still has one of the largest holder populations, with 1.57 million tokenized stock holders, second only to BNB Chain (Blockworks, October 2026).

Key protocols include Backpack Securities using the Sunrise protocol, as well as Ondo Global Markets, PreStocks, and xStocks.

Part of the reason lies in economics. Solana's low fees make small holdings, frequent trading, and retail ownership feasible, allowing people to trade tokenized stocks around the clock like crypto assets.

One proof is that the tokenized $GRND (Grindr) generated $31 million in trading volume within 24 hours of its launch on Solana on September 10. The day before, Grindr's trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange was about $16.6 million, with its average daily trading volume close to $25 million.

Why StonkFun Can Break Through

StonkFun best embodies Solana in 2026 because it combines the two most important aspects of this chain: token issuance and tokenized stocks.

It is a token issuance platform where new tokens can choose any asset specified by the creator as the pricing asset, including tokenized stocks and ETFs, rather than being limited to SOL or USDC. Its own token $STONK was issued using SPYx------a tokenized S&P 500 product------as the pricing asset. In just two months, StonkFun became the second highest revenue-generating token issuance platform across the chain, second only to Pump, with revenue reaching $16.7 million in the past 30 days (DefiLlama, as of October 19, 2026).

In September, it had nine days of revenue exceeding both Pump's issuance platform and Pons on Robinhood Chain, peaking at $2.3 million on the 11th. For the entire month, Pump still led (DefiLlama).

We studied why it was able to spread rapidly (data from StonkFun, as of October 21, 2026):

• A clear difference in one sentence------Issuing a meme coin priced against the S&P 500.
• A verifiable positive flywheel for anyone------Platform revenue is used for repurchasing and burning $STONK, with revenue, repurchase, and burn data available on a public dashboard. Cumulative revenue is $35.5 million, with about 60% used for repurchase: $21.2 million has been repurchased to date, and the burned $STONK is valued at $26.4 million at current prices.
• Built-in reward mechanisms within products------Each token can distribute earnings to its holders in its pricing asset through transfer taxes or liquidity pool fees. Nearly $90 million has been distributed to date, with reward funds coming from the transfer taxes or liquidity pool fees of each token itself, rather than StonkFun's revenue.
• Ecosystem integration and support------In early September, after StonkFun integrated into Raydium's LaunchLab, $STONK rose by about 250%, reaching a market cap of $140 million; Solana also publicly supported StonkFun by replying to its posts.

StonkFun combines simple and understandable product differences, transparent and verifiable revenue, tokens linked to revenue, and distribution channels from a broader ecosystem.

Part Three: Where Will Solana Go

Token Supercycle

Meme coins have brought a large number of retail investors, trading activity, and network adoption to Solana, and they still do. What has changed is everything surrounding the entire system. Solana calls it the "Internet Capital Market": from stocks and funds to dollars and agent payments, anything can be issued and traded on-chain, operating around the clock without limits on trading scale.

In 2026, Solana further moves towards a "token supercycle": stablecoins, tokenized assets, payments, and AI-driven activities are migrating on-chain, while AI is accelerating the demand for capital, collaboration, and real-time settlement.

Solana's core judgment is that compared to the scale of global assets, the RWA market is still insignificant, thus there is enormous growth potential. The foundation is also investing resources accordingly, hiring talents in stablecoins, AI, and institutional business, and organizing flagship events like London Breakpoint around this narrative.

Wall Street Enters

• Tokenized Funds and Credit ------Industry giants have already launched related products: BlackRock's BUIDL, Franklin Templeton's BENJI, and JPMorgan's $50 million commercial paper issued and settled on Solana. Additionally, through a new partnership with Allfunds, one of the world's largest fund distribution platforms, funds issued on Solana will reach over 3,300 institutions in Allfunds' network starting in Q4 2026.
• More Stocks, Faster Launch------Covering Pre-IPO companies, supporting 24/7 minting and redemption, and able to launch corresponding assets on the same day stocks land on Nasdaq.
• Payments ------Visa is conducting USDC settlements with banks in the U.S. on Solana; Western Union has launched its own dollar token on Solana; Solana Pay is piloting in over 330,000 merchants in South Korea; Samsung Wallet is also adding functionality to transfer USDC via Solana to up to 82 million Galaxy devices in the U.S.
• Institutional Participation------Including spot ETFs and DAT companies. It also includes connecting traditional asset custody and tokenized issuance through Securitize, Ondo, and xStocks, providing participation channels for institutions. In March 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jointly classified SOL as a digital commodity.

Solana's RWA ecosystem reached a peak total value of $4.6 billion in late September, dropping to $4.38 billion on October 20 (RWA.xyz).

Speed alone is not enough to satisfy institutional issuers. They also need control capabilities, settlement certainty, and compatibility with custodians. Solana DvP was launched in October, with JPMorgan participating and providing feedback. It offers institutions a reusable standard for securities settlement, eliminating the need to write separate settlement contracts for each transaction.

AI and Agent Payments

Solana is betting on becoming the place for AI agents to make payments, primarily relying on x402. This open standard allows software to directly pay for APIs in ordinary web requests.

• Agent Payment ------ The foundation has developed pay.sh in collaboration with Google Cloud, utilizing the open x402 and MPP standards, supporting various mainstream stablecoins, with settlements as low as $0.001 per transaction. The foundation also operates a dedicated @x402 account to promote the application of this standard on Solana.
• Payment Channels ------ Now integrated with Alibaba Cloud's inference API, specifically built for micro-payments at machine speed.
• Establishing Industry Standards ------ The Solana Foundation has become a Premier member of the Linux Foundation x402 Working Group alongside Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, Coinbase, and Google.
• Agent Identity and Wallet ------ Providing Agents with on-chain identities and wallets that can spend within preset limits.

According to a report from Solana, it processed 76% of all x402 transactions in the four weeks ending in late September 2026.

Solana plays a settlement role in AI. Models run elsewhere, while agents facilitate micro-payments for APIs, data, computing power, and services to settle on Solana at machine speed.

The foundation believes that in the coming years, Agents may dominate most on-chain activities. If this prediction holds true, the chain with the lowest settlement costs and fastest speeds will be best positioned to handle these activities.

Trading, Perpetual Contracts, and Prediction Markets

These markets already have established players on Solana and other chains, but new products continue to emerge, and Solana is vying for market share in every sector.

The leading prediction market on Solana, @world_xyz, amassed over 1 million prospective users before its website launched. Its marketing is both clever and unusually authentic.

Before the launch, World never disclosed what it was, instead leveraging curiosity to attract users. As a new project on Solana, it naturally drew attention. The first tweet on June 23 simply asked what World was, garnering 3.6 million views. In the following week, the team continuously posted short, witty, and meme-filled content, prompting speculation. Whenever a major creator showed interest, it would post; whenever someone discussed it, it would retweet; nearly every creator, project, and news account received replies, igniting a search for clues and answers.

On July 1, World revealed its identity: a prediction market built into Phantom on Solana. Thus, the announcement reached Phantom's large existing user base from day one. Integration with Chainlink and Hyperliquid further enhanced its credibility. With the combined efforts of its own social channels, community spread, partnerships, and product integrations, the hype continued until the website launched in early September.

In the realm of perpetual contracts, protocols like @PhoenixTrade are rapidly expanding their market share.

Solana's latest project is @joinfrontier------a community for traders that offers trading activities, prize pools, leaderboards, VIP programs, and exclusive gatherings.

Underlying Upgrades Supporting All of This

Alpenglow is the largest consensus upgrade Solana has implemented since its launch, going live on the mainnet on October 21, 2026. It reduces the final confirmation time for transactions from approximately 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds, directly aiding Solana in creating the most desired market.

Tokenized stocks, professional traders, and AI agents all require exchange-like settlement speeds, making Alpenglow the foundation for all other developments.

How Solana Supports Builders

Solana funds builders through various channels: Solana Foundation Grants, which provide funding in stages, including convertible grants; Superteam, which has local chapters worldwide offering small grants up to $10,000 and paid bounty tasks through Superteam Earn; Colosseum, which hosts hackathons providing seed funding to winners; and numerous Hacker Houses around the globe. When the foundation wants someone to develop a specific product, it publicly solicits proposals.

Solana's latest hackathon, Stocklana, focuses on developing innovative products around stocks on Solana, with a prize pool exceeding $125,000.

A Settlement Layer Serving All Markets

Looking ahead, Solana is clearly focused on trading, AI, payments, RWA, and institutional business, with prediction markets and perpetual contracts following closely behind. However, it seems to be simultaneously vying for market share in every category.

Trading remains the primary source of revenue. Tokenized assets and payments will extend the same settlement layer to institutions and consumers, while agent payments introduce machine-generated transactions. All require low-cost, fast, and round-the-clock settlements, yet each needs different market entry strategies. How Solana addresses these differences will determine its next phase.

Organizations are also adjusting accordingly. In September, the foundation appointed former Coin Security Ball Chief Marketing Officer Rachel Conlan as Chief Strategy Officer, responsible for institutional partnerships, ecosystem growth, and market entry strategies. Jamal Raees joined as General Manager of Payment Business. Distribution capabilities and enterprise adoption are gradually becoming central to Solana's strategy.

Part Four: How Solana Conducts Marketing

The Strategy Behind It

According to Y Strategy, Solana's primary marketing asset is its dissemination and reach system. Builders launch products, the ecosystem focuses attention on product releases, wallets and trading platforms convert that attention into transactions, and public data turns usage into evidence, which in turn attracts the next batch of builders.

A good application gives the network something concrete to promote. Distribution channels can help applications find users, while visible business progress provides the next founder with a reason to build here. When this process works repeatedly, each successful launch can feed back into the ecosystem's attractiveness and support the next project's capabilities.

This is the mechanism we observe in the following case studies. Its effectiveness depends on whether attention can be converted into sustained usage and whether businesses can survive.

Solana also chooses to highlight its prominent data metrics. It has changed how people measure a chain: from TVL to application revenue and transaction volume. TVL measures the funds deposited into applications, while revenue and transaction volume reflect how much of that funding is actually used and how much users are paying for it.

Solana's application revenue and on-chain transaction volume have consistently outperformed all other chains; even without focusing on TVL, it ranks third in that metric, closely trailing BNB Chain (DefiLlama, October 24, 2026).

Two Audiences, One Voice

Solana simultaneously advances two narratives. Institutions hear about the "Internet Capital Market," a concept that has now expanded into the "Token Supercycle," encompassing stablecoins, tokenized assets, payments, and AI. The community hears about memes and trading battlegrounds. Solana speaks to both types of people: its expression has both a corporate institutional style and the temperament of speculative players, engaging with existing audiences while paving the way for new ones it hopes to attract. In its self-description, memes are still on par with stocks and AI agents.

How Information Spreads

Solana's reach capability is built in layers. The main account conveys core messages → associated accounts cover specific tracks, products, news, and regions → leading opinion leaders (teams, builders, and independent creators) relay new product releases to traders in real-time.

Its dissemination range is not limited to X but also includes Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and email communications. Solana Media sets content directions for institutions, developers, payments, and communities, and produces its own podcasts.

Associated Accounts

The main account @solana is backed by 13 associated accounts, each with a specific focus. These include independent accounts aimed at the developer community, regional accounts like @Solana_zh, the @x402 account responsible for AI payments, and the @perps account covering the Solana perpetual contracts space. One interesting account is @luminaries: a completely meme-centric account aimed at speculative players.

Leading Opinion Leaders

Solana's leading opinion leaders fall into three categories.

• Team-led ------ Toly, Raj, and the core team continuously post, providing substantial dissemination coverage.
• Builder voices ------ Ecosystem founders, as well as well-known figures like @mert, @armaniferrante, @SOLBigBrain, and @SolanaLegend.
• Independent Solana opinion leaders ------ Accounts primarily reporting on Solana and its staunch supporters, such as @SolanaSensei, @FabianoSolana, and @blknoiz06.

Ecosystem Marketing Support

Solana also invests its entire strength into ecosystem projects. When a release is significant enough, the main account will publicly support it, associated accounts will bring it to their respective audiences, and leading opinion leaders will amplify the dissemination.

Attention is just one part of the equation. Solana also brings real users and transaction volumes to ecosystem applications. Its latest trading initiative @joinfrontier is currently collaborating with @PhoenixTrade and @solflare to conduct trading activities, bringing in real transaction volumes for them. The entire track can receive the same support: when stocks become a focal point, it is set as the theme for the Stocklana hackathon.

This complete information dissemination path is the hardest part to replicate. Solana's marketing support shortens the distance between a usable product and potential users. A small team launching a product on Solana can receive support from the main account, associated accounts, and top opinion leaders within a day. In other places, achieving such coverage may require weeks of paid promotion, and it may never be realized. For founders choosing a release platform, this gap is as important as cost or speed.

Anyone Can Be Solana's CMO

The foundation has left a lot of room for the community to shape brand expression, and community language and activities are often amplified by official accounts.

Solana places great importance on inviting the community to market for it. Anyone promoting Solana can call themselves Solana's nCMO and include this identity in their profile.

This mechanism works in reverse as well. When asked which Solana applications need more marketing, over 800 responses were received—this is equivalent to a continuously updated project list that tells the foundation where to direct its communication channels.

This approach is effective because the audience already holds $SOL or tokens based on applications built on Solana. The motivation already exists; Solana just gave it a name and provided a direction for action. This also constitutes its limitation: if a company's audience does not hold any relevant assets, even conducting the exact same activities may yield little return.

Finally, content is produced by an internal team. Over the past two years, the foundation has established its own media operation system, producing and distributing content through its own channels.

Marketing Through Product Releases

Solana continuously launches products, and each release creates its own news cycle: World for prediction markets, Frontier for traders, @tokens providing token data and pricing while offering APIs for developers, and pay.sh for agent payments.

Each release has its own marketing activities, and a consistently stable rhythm is more important than any single release. There are always new products or plans to discuss, so Solana rarely disappears from people's attention between two announcements.

Only Possible on Solana

"Only possible on Solana" is one of the most impressive and widely used slogans on this chain today. It was initially proposed spontaneously by @mert and spread within the community, later being used by Solana's official channels for its own activities, including the title of the foundation's Breakpoint 2023 recap article.

This campaign also launched a landing page aimed at supporting developers and builders on Solana. The page showcases what this technology can achieve, such as high throughput and native scalability, and directly guides builders to resources and the community to help them start building.

Since this phrase originated from the community, it has persisted and is now integrated into the way people talk about this chain. Anyone can spontaneously use it to describe anything that can only happen here.

X Account Operation Strategy

Language Style. Solana's account writes as if it is a member of the community, quickly responding to pop culture. Short posts that do not mention products often perform better than formal announcements; whenever there is a new trend in fashion or gaming, this account usually follows up on the same day.

Attention First, Announcement Later. Solana creates buzz before official news is announced. For example, during its preheating for the collaboration with Starknet, it posted a message that candidly commented on Starknet data, which sparked a day-long discussion and garnered 4.2 million views. The next day, the mystery was revealed: STRK would be launched on Solana.

Investing More at Key Moments. At truly important junctures, the production quality noticeably improves, and formal advertisements are launched instead of just flat images. When the U.S. spot SOL ETF debuted, Solana released a well-produced advertisement that combined Wall Street imagery with crypto meme culture, achieving around 2 million views.

Unique Activities. Solana frequently conducts such activities, such as auctioning advertising space on its avatar for charity. It sold nine advertising spots on its logo, using the proceeds of $166,000 for disaster relief in Nepal.

Quick Action Also Means Occasional Missteps. At the beginning of 2025, a marketing video from the main account faced severe criticism and was deleted within hours; a few days later, Anatoly Yakovenko publicly apologized.

Superteam: Offline Grassroots Network

Superteam is the community layer of Solana and one of the largest initiatives in the crypto industry. It discovers, funds, and supports builders in the ecosystem, connecting creative talents, developers, operators, and ordinary Solana supporters.

It operates in most major countries, including talent matching, local workshops, funding, and the most interesting part—bounty tasks. Superteam Earn publishes paid tasks, design, and programming work, allowing anyone from anywhere to earn crypto assets and build an on-chain work resume. Most of the funding comes from companies and decentralized applications (dApps) operating on Solana.

Teams and contributors can also host online or offline events with the support of local chapters; Superteam actively encourages members to organize these events.

Superteam fills a gap in this cycle that cannot be completed online. Social accounts can reach those already in the crypto industry but cannot help a developer in Lagos or Istanbul take the first step and complete their first paid task. Local chapters achieve this through workshops, local events, and bounty tasks: organized by locals in their native language. For markets where it is impossible for the core team to station personnel one by one, this is also the lowest-cost entry method; the returns it brings are not only communication coverage but also loyalty—those who earn their first crypto assets through Superteam bounty tasks often continue to build on that chain.

In line with the foundation's direction, Superteam allows local operators to execute according to local conditions. A core team cannot staff every market, language environment, and builder community, but local chapters can. It is precisely this combination of centralized coordination and local execution that allows Solana to remain active in so many places simultaneously.

Part Five: What Other Teams Can Learn

Why Solana Wins

1. Solana Embraced the Trading Boom

From the beginning, Solana aimed for high speed and low fees, so when the meme coin trading surged after the Pump launch in 2024, this chain could accommodate the ensuing demand. Solana's DEX trading volume rose from $54.5 billion in 2023 to $694.6 billion in 2024, approximately 13 times the previous amount (DefiLlama). This is also part of the reason why $TRUMP chose to launch on Solana in January 2025, and Solana managed to withstand the trading peak at that time.

The operation of the crypto market relies on both technology and attention, and Solana embraced the speculative attributes within it. After the influx of trading volume, Solana pushed ecosystem applications to the forefront and shifted the metrics from TVL to its leading trading volume and application revenue.

2. One Chain, No Fragmentation

L2BEAT lists 95 layer two network projects on Ethereum, each with its own users, liquidity, and brand. On Solana, everything is on the same chain, so projects do not need to leave this chain or wait for exchanges to list tokens to complete their launch, gain liquidity, reach traders, and earn revenue.

Tokens recognized by the market on Pump can directly "graduate" into trading pools, and financing support is also in place: in the first half of 2026, 2,857 teams submitted products to the Solana Frontier hackathon. The accelerator behind the event, Colosseum, subsequently selected 21 startups for investment from the hackathon-winning teams and the ongoing Eternal sprint projects (Colosseum, June 29, 2026). Since each launch can simultaneously reach the entire ecosystem, this has become one of Solana's most underrated marketing advantages, making product building here exciting.

3. Everyone Has a Way to Make Money

Solana enables almost all participants to find ways to earn money. Most of the user spending is retained by applications: in the past 30 days, applications retained $158 million in revenue, while the chain itself retained only $3.3 million (DefiLlama, as of October 24, 2026). Phantom, Jupiter, and Pump have grown into well-known brands in this way, promoting Solana while promoting themselves.

In addition to trading, community members can also earn income through content creation, design, development, and other means. So far, Superteam Earn has distributed over $16 million through 3,253 bounty tasks, short-term work, and funding, open to over 240,000 people (Superteam Earn). This has rewarded holders who endured the bear market, and when so many people can make money from the ecosystem, many will naturally be willing to promote it.

4. Rebirth from the Ruins

After the collapse of FTX and Alameda, SOL fell below $10 in December 2022, marking a 94% drop for the year (Decrypt). A few months later, as the SEC took action against exchanges, Robinhood delisted SOL from its app (The Block, June 2023). Despite this, Solana continued to fund developers, host hackathons, and launch products during the bear market, with many betting on its resurgence. It indeed did: by January 2025, SOL reached an all-time high of $293, approximately 30 times its low (CoinGecko). Those who held on were rewarded, and this recovery turned many into vocal supporters of Solana.

5. Sense of Belonging Transformed into Marketing Power

The crypto market is inherently social, with people seeking a sense of belonging. Ethereum built its identity around decentralization and research, while Solana shaped its identity around speed, risk-taking, and continuous experimentation: the team consistently launched products, and the official account communicated with the community like family.

This sense of belonging turned the community itself into a marketing force. Native creators on Solana reported every product launch, members spontaneously created content, and anyone could call themselves an nCMO, promoting and defending the chain. Offline, Superteam has branches in 25 regions (Superteam); Breakpoint 2023 attracted over 3,000 attendees, including developers, traders, artists, and crypto enthusiasts (Solana Foundation). Such a diverse coalition allowed Solana to reach audiences that no single official account could cover alone.

Solana's Shortcomings

1. Revenue Highly Sensitive to Speculative Heat

Launchpad alone contributed to over a third of Solana's application revenue; combined with trading apps and DEXs, it accounted for about two-thirds (DefiLlama, as of October 24, 2026). This closely tied Solana's revenue to market enthusiasm. After the market cooled in January 2025, Solana's application revenue saw the largest drop among mainstream public chains: by March, it had fallen by 79%, compared to 57% for Base and 30% for Ethereum (DefiLlama).

2. Value Remains at the Application Level

Low fees attracted users but left little revenue for the chain itself. In the past 30 days, applications on Solana retained $158 million in revenue, while the chain itself retained only $3.3 million (DefiLlama, as of October 24, 2026). Stakers faced a similar disparity: in Q3 2026, about 98% of staker income came from newly issued SOL (Blockworks), meaning increased activity on Solana provided limited direct benefits to holders.

Holders voted in August to accelerate the reduction of the inflation rate, and the proposal to share priority fees with stakers (SIMD 123) has been approved. For institutions, the lingering question is: how much of the value generated by these on-chain activities will flow back to $SOL?

3. Competitors Leading in Certain Areas

Solana leads in on-chain transactions, but other markets are dominated by different ecosystems. Ethereum's DeFi TVL stands at $49.2 billion, while Solana's is $5.8 billion (DefiLlama, as of October 24, 2026). Base can directly import users from the Coinbase app, and Robinhood Chain can import users from Robinhood, while Solana's main entry point, Phantom, is an independent company. External channels are just beginning to open, such as Samsung Wallet adding Solana-based USDC transfer functionality for up to 82 million Galaxy devices in the U.S. (The Block, October 7, 2026).

In the derivatives space, only Hyperliquid exchange generated $66.5 million in revenue in the past 30 days, equivalent to about 40% of Solana's total application revenue (DefiLlama). Solana leads in spot trading and consumer-facing crypto applications but still faces strong competition, lagging in DeFi, perpetual contract DEXs, and attracting mainstream users into the crypto space.

4. Tokenized Stock Space Rapidly Becoming Crowded

Until early June 2026, Solana accounted for nearly all tokenized stock DEX trading volume, peaking at 99.8% in January. However, the market size was still small, with weekly trading volume around $45.8 million at the beginning of the year, and other chains had yet to establish real trading venues. On June 11, bStocks launched on BNB Chain, changing the landscape.

Solana's trading volume continued to grow, but competitors grew faster: BNB Chain led in July and August, while Robinhood Chain captured 74% of the market share in the week of August 31. By mid-October, Solana's share was 31%, Robinhood Chain's was 26%, BNB Chain's was 25%, and Base's was 18% (DWF Labs, using Blockworks data). Issuers like xStocks and Ondo adopted a multi-chain approach, allowing liquidity to migrate freely, while Robinhood also benefits from its own user base and stock brokerage licenses.

Lessons Other Teams Can Learn

• Make your ecosystem worth builders' investment. Teams will choose places where they can launch products, find liquidity, and earn revenue without waiting for tokens to be listed. Support through funding, hackathons, and activities that promote product usage, measuring success by active projects and users.
• Understand your audience and communicate in their language. While communicating with existing users, incorporate expressions that can attract target new users. When projects compete for attention, they face the most influential creators in the field, so informal posts that don’t mention products often prove more effective than formal announcements.
• Promote your ecosystem, not just yourself. Give applications and founders more exposure than the public chain itself, as promoting already used products is more convincing. But the cost is patience: you first need to have applications worth recommending.
• Let the community own the brand. Use the language created by the community itself instead of replacing it with marketing-designed expressions, while accepting that you cannot control the direction of its dissemination.
• Choose metrics where you can win. Highlight the data where you have the most advantage, but be prepared for these metrics to potentially turn against you when cycles shift.
• Continue funding builders. Even in a quiet market, continue to invest: Tensor and Crossmint both emerged from the Riptide hackathon held by Solana in 2022. Such investments yield goodwill and recognition that no marketing campaign can buy.

Conclusion

Solana's technology, community, incentive mechanisms, and applications together form an ecosystem. The technology enables massive trading volumes, the community plays a crucial role in attracting and retaining users, and applications cover the complete lifecycle of liquidity, keeping the funds brought in within the ecosystem and continuously driving its economic growth. Creators, developers, traders, and enterprises can complete their respective business cycles on Solana, with the activities of each group providing momentum for the others.

The same cycle also carries risks. Most revenue still relies on trading and token issuance, with only a small amount of value flowing to SOL itself, while competitors remain ahead in DeFi, derivatives, and mainstream user onboarding. The key for Solana's next step lies in whether it can convert its leading advantage in trading into sustained demand and momentum for entering other markets.