Original Author: Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Reference Link: Grayscale Report
As a loyal SOL guardian, I have somewhat lost confidence in SOL.
From the perspective of token price, this cycle may not be over yet. However, among the top market cap tokens, BTC, ETH, BNB, and even XRP have all set historical highs in the second half of 2025, while SOL has not broken its previous high since reaching a price peak of $295 in January (there was a prolonged Solana Meme coin craze during this period).
Why hasn’t SOL risen? It could be due to the token inflation mechanism, the shift of the Meme craze to other networks, or liquidity issues and whales being pessimistic. Another point to note is that Solana seems to always be a step behind in chasing trends.
(Group chat screenshot)
Recently, Grayscale released a report titled "Solana: Crypto’s Financial Bazaar," which analyzed Solana's technical aspects, network ecology, total token supply, and value metrics, providing some confidence for "SOL guardians." Odaily Planet Daily summarized the key points of the report as follows:
Solana's Fundamentals: Technology, On-chain Activity, Trading Volume
According to the report, compared to other networks like Ethereum, BNB Chain, Tron, Cardano, and Sui, Solana has a significant advantage in the depth and diversity of on-chain activity. It leads in users, trading volume, and transaction fees, indicating that the Solana network has more users and economic activity, which equates to higher network value.
On-chain Data and Trading Volume
As shown in the figure below, SOL ranks third in market capitalization, but its daily active users, daily trading volume, daily transaction fees, and transactions per second all rank first among similar blockchains.
Ecological Applications and Network Revenue
The Solana network also hosts many industry-leading applications, such as:
Raydium DEX, which is a core component of Solana's DeFi infrastructure. Since the beginning of the year, Solana DEX's trading volume has exceeded $1.2 trillion, surpassing any other blockchain ecosystem. Additionally, Solana's leading DEX aggregator, Jupiter, is the largest aggregator by trading volume in the cryptocurrency industry;
pump.fun, a long-standing token issuance platform, with approximately 2 million active users per month and daily revenue of about $1.2 million;
Helium, a DePIN project focused on mobile hotspots. Helium allows users to contribute network capacity, thereby building a nationwide mobile access point network. These services are often cheaper than centralized alternatives, and Helium currently has 1.5 million daily active users and 112,000 hotspots, having established partnerships with major telecom companies like AT&T and Telefónica.
The above applications represent only a small portion of the more than 500 applications on Solana. Furthermore, as a blockchain that almost possesses all the functionalities of other mainstream networks, Solana ranks third in NFT trading, fifth in stablecoin trading volume, and seventh in tokenized assets. Other recent use cases that have gained traction include Pokémon card collectibles trading and on-chain issuance of tokenized stocks.
Evaluating the Solana ecosystem should consider both the blockchain itself and the economic activities of its hosted applications. These data may change over time, but the Solana ecosystem generates approximately $425 million in fees per month, with annual revenue exceeding $5 billion. Grayscale believes that fees are the most direct indicator of the total demand for the blockchain and its applications, and this data indicates that Solana has significant demand.
Solana's Advantages: Second Only to Ethereum in Developer Scale, Suitable for All Users
Universal Technical Advantages
In addition to the fundamental analysis, Grayscale also mentioned that SOL has good data because it offers fast, low-cost transactions and a seamless user experience. The network generates a new block every 400 milliseconds, and transactions can be finalized in about 12-13 seconds. Besides high throughput, transaction costs have remained relatively low:
Solana uses a technology called "local fee markets," which limits fee competition to specific applications. So far this year, users have paid an average transaction fee of only $0.02, and partly due to this feature, the median daily transaction fee this year has been only $0.001. Solana's transaction speed and cost-effectiveness are faster and cheaper compared to similar blockchains. The upcoming Solana upgrade, Alpenglow, is expected to reduce final confirmation time to 100-150 milliseconds.
Solana's user experience benefits from its "monolithic" (single-layer blockchain) design rather than a layered design (which avoids the need to bridge assets between network components) and the wallet infrastructure led by Phantom. In recent years, the number of network failures on Solana has also been significantly lower than the industry average, which is a foundation for user adoption.
Additionally, Solana's smart contracts do not rely on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (the system used by Ethereum and many other smart contract platforms, including BNB Chain, Polygon, and Avalanche). Instead, it uses a unique architecture called the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM). Applications based on SVM cannot be easily transferred to non-SVM blockchains, leading to stable user retention.
Second Only to Ethereum in Developer Count
Currently, there are over 1,000 full-time developers dedicated to Solana and SVM applications, and the growth rate of developers focusing on Solana over the past two years has surpassed that of any other smart contract platform (as shown in the figure below), second only to Ethereum. Over time, this human capital can contribute to Solana's ongoing innovation.
Long-term Storage Value of SOL Tokens (Inflation, Token Performance, and Competitive Rivals)
It is well known that due to the collapse of FTX, the price of SOL tokens fell from a peak of nearly $260 in November 2021 to just $2 in December 2022. After FTX's bankruptcy, many retail investors felt uncertain about Solana's future, even though there were still many SVM developers remaining on Solana at that time.
However, starting from the end of 2023, the SOL token began to recover, significantly outperforming the FTSE/Grayscale Smart Contract Platform Cryptocurrency Index.
Currently, the supply of SOL tokens grows at a rate of about 4% to 4.5% per year, which can be seen as a reason for the dilution of value for token holders, all else being equal. Depending on network conditions, SOL stakers can earn about 7% nominal returns, but the "real" returns adjusted for inflation are about 2.5% to 3%. Currently, about two-thirds of the outstanding SOL tokens have been staked.
Grayscale states that SOL provides utility within the Solana network and may yield additional corresponding financial returns, but their value is related to the scale of the network. Like other smart contract platform tokens, the investment theory for SOL tokens centers on the potential growth of the Solana network's scale. Like other assets, the price of SOL tokens does not always change with the changes in network fundamentals. However, if the Solana network grows over time—gaining more users, processing more transactions, and earning more fees—investors can expect the price of SOL to rise.
Grayscale believes: Solana presents itself as a "fast, low-cost blockchain open to everyone" in vision. However, its specific design leaves room for competitors to capture or retain market share in certain use cases.
For example, other blockchains sometimes provide faster and/or cheaper transactions by operating a more centralized network (e.g., using only a small number of active network nodes). Even though centralization may bring risks, users may prefer this convenience. Other blockchains may compete with Solana by keeping their networks permissioned (i.e., only allowing approved users and/or approved activities).
On the other hand, compared to Bitcoin or Ethereum, the SOL token may be less suitable as a long-term "store of value" currency asset. This partly reflects the higher nominal supply inflation of SOL: scarcity is a key characteristic of any long-term value storage. However, a more important factor may be the network's ability to resist third-party interference. For a digital asset to serve as a long-term store of value, users need to have confidence that they can transact in almost all circumstances in the future. One way to support this outcome is to maintain low node requirements to keep the network highly decentralized and easily replicable. Solana's efficiency comes at the cost of relatively high hardware and bandwidth requirements, which means many network nodes operate in data centers. Theoretically, over time, this could become a source of centralization and a vehicle for third-party interference with the network.**
Of course, these are complex and unresolved issues, and investors' views on whether crypto assets can serve as long-term stores of value may change over time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Grayscale believes that the three most important metrics for measuring on-chain activity are users, trading volume, and transaction fees, and in these metrics, Solana is currently the leading network for on-chain activity. Although the Solana network faces many strong competitors, the depth and diversity of Solana's on-chain economy provide a solid foundation for the valuation of SOL, which is also a necessary condition for its further growth in the future.
With strong network performance, a large user base, leading trading volume and transaction fees, and having undergone a rebirth, Solana has dominated the Meme craze. Additionally, Solana has a massive SOL treasury to support it; aside from the inflation mechanism, there seem to be no serious issues affecting the token's value. Despite having the script of a "protagonist in a feel-good story," it has yet to reach new highs. Finally, as this article concludes, the price of the SOL token has dropped back to $185, and the SOL guardians are truly out of options.
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