Increased capital has clustered around Solana over the past month, even as user activity shows mixed momentum.
Per DeFiLlama, Solana’s 24-hour DEX volume recently printed about $4.6 billion, with perpetuals near $2.1 billion. Stablecoin supply sits around $12 billion, native TVL is back near all-time highs at $11.7 billion, bridged TVL is tracked near $57 billion, and active addresses hover in the low-to-mid millions daily.
At the same time, 24-hour chain fees are roughly $1.6 million, and daily transactions are about 65 million, a profile that reflects deep liquidity and steady throughput rather than acceleration in fee capture. As for price context, SOL traded around $198 at publication.
The divergence between liquidity and usage has been building since the second quarter. Messari reported in its Q2 State of Solana that average daily spot DEX volume fell 45.4% quarter over quarter to $2.5 billion after the memecoin spike faded, even as DeFi TVL grew, positioning Solana as the No. 2 network by TVL.
That backdrop helps explain the current mix: order flow and capital are available when risk appetite returns. However, fee and revenue growth remain sensitive to the activity composition and market cycles.
The Solana mix
Derivatives markets reinforce the liquidity picture. CoinGlass shows robust perpetual activity in SOL.
Funding appears orderly rather than stretched, consistent with an environment where leverage is present but not overheating. This matters for microstructure; steady funding lowers the odds of outsized forced flows and keeps depth available to market makers when spot leads or follows.
On-chain cash and venues continue to concentrate on Solana even without a concurrent jump in monetization. DeFiLlama’s chain dashboard lists stablecoins above $12 billion and multi-billion dollar daily DEX turnover, while app fees and chain revenue trend materially below the peaks recorded earlier in the year.
That combination implies users can route large flows through Solana at low marginal cost, a trait that supports market making, MEV-aware routing and aggregation, and cross-venue arbitrage, but it does not automatically translate to higher fee intake for validators and applications.
The context from Messari’s Q2 readout adds a structural layer. The report highlights how liquidity providers and aggregators concentrated share during the first half as speculative bursts cooled, with protocol revenues lagging trading activity.
Meanwhile, stablecoins remain a key pillar for settlement and inventory management on Solana, keeping balances on chain even when transactional intensity moderates.
The near-term question is less about catalysts and more about the mix. If activity continues to skew toward low-fee transfers and highly efficient DEX routing, liquidity will remain ample, and spreads will remain tight, while fee capture and app-level revenues could lag.
If volumes migrate toward higher fee verticals, revenue and fees should re-rate with little need for incremental infrastructure.
For now, the tape shows Solana absorbing sizable volumes with modest fee growth, a profile that keeps it a liquidity magnet while user monetization trails the flow.
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