$SOL Although it fell 33% in the first quarter of 2026 to close at around $83, Messari’s Q1 Solana State report tells a story that is harder to ignore than the price chart suggests.
Although the dollar numbers declined overall, the network set a new record for daily trading volume, real-world asset market capitalization increased to more than $2 billion, and validator revenue remained largely unchanged.
Record activity, lower prices
The report’s headline number is a record high of 112.6 million average daily non-voting transactions, an increase of 50% from the previous quarter and 15% above the previous record set in Q2 2025.
This means that more transactions occurred on Solana each day in the first quarter than at any point in the network’s history, which clearly contradicts the price decline. Meanwhile, Chain GDP, Messari’s term for total application revenue, was nearly flat at $342.2 million, slightly higher than $341.8 million in Q4 2025.
Pump.fun remains the largest single source of revenue at $124.7 million, a 17% quarter-over-quarter improvement, according to the report. In second place was trading app Axiom, which rose 36% to $42.4 million.
But the most dramatic move was a launchpad called “Bags” that allowed users to share their trading fees with their social media accounts. Its revenue rose 1,347% to $11.5 million after a meme coin tied to an open source AI project sparked intense trading activity in January.
That momentum didn’t last, with Bags’ revenue dropping 85% month-over-month through February. This episode was another example of how quickly new activities cycle through Solana’s application layer.
You may also like:
- SEC postpones plans for tokenized stock trading on crypto platforms
- XRP holders gain new revenue opportunities through Flare-D’CENT partnership
- SEC prepares to allow trading of tokenized stocks on crypto platforms
Meanwhile, DeFi TVL fell 22% QoQ to $6.16 billion, with this decline almost directly following. $SOLThis is not due to a significant outflow of users, but rather a drop in the price of . Solana’s share of overall DeFi TVL remained largely unchanged from 6.9% to 6.7%, but Kamino regained the top spot as the protocol with $1.72 billion, ahead of Jupiter’s $1.69 billion.
Drift’s performance was impacted by a $285 million exploit attributed to a sophisticated social engineering operation associated with North Korean state-affiliated threat actors.
When looking at real economic value (basically fees paid to validators and MEV chips), the report shows a decrease of just 1% to $89.5 million. This number puts Solana in second place among all networks, behind Hyperliquid’s $156 million.
RWA takes the lead
If there was a story that defined the first quarter beyond the bear market backdrop, it was real-world assets. Solana’s market saw its value increase 43% sequentially to $2.01 billion.
BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized money market fund doubled to $525.4 million after Anchorage Digital added custody support, with the latter holding approximately 81% of the total supply on the network by the end of the quarter.
Meanwhile, Ondo Finance launched over 200 tokenized US stocks and ETFs on Solana, including the same-day tokenization of BitGo stock on the day of the company’s NYSE IPO.
Finally, while the market capitalization of stablecoins on the platform remained at just under $15 billion, its composition has changed. USDC decreased by 21% to $7.83 billion, but remained the largest at 53% of the total, while USDT increased by 34% to $2.89 billion.
At the same time, World Liberty Financial’s USD 1 rose 473% to $883.5 million, mainly due to Binance reallocating customer holdings to Solana.
