Solana: Unfiltered update shows the Solana blockchain recording strong institutional growth and high DeFi volumes, while the price of the cryptocurrency remains under pressure and user activity is faltering. SOL price is trading just above the year’s low. The first Solana ETFs are delivering high trading volumes, and DeFi volumes on Solana significantly exceed Ethereum’s. There is strong user activity on social media.
Solana stands at the end of 2025 before a clear contrast: the price hovers just above the yearly low, while institutional milestones, technological upgrades and major DeFi successes accumulate. The recent decline is embedded in a broader market correction that has also hit Bitcoin hard. For Solana, important activity metrics have noticeably declined. A central theme in 2025 is the sharp drop in active users.
According to Dune Analytics, the number of active traders fell from over 30 million monthly users to less than 1 million—a 97% decline. This development has reignited discussion about the sustainability of the high valuation and the growth story to date. Nevertheless, the network generated about $1.3 billion in revenue in 2025, ranking at the top among blockchains.
Compared with $2.5 billion in 2024, this is a clear decline, but mainly reflects the cooled overall market environment. Even on the Total Value Locked (TVL) metric, Solana appears more resilient than price development would suggest. Over the year, the value of assets bound in the network fluctuated between $7 and $12 billion. Currently, TVL stands at about $8.8 billion, slightly above year-start levels after an all-time high of over $13.2 billion earlier in the year.
In the DeFi sector, Solana defends its role as one of the most important platforms. The network remains the second-largest DeFi platform and leads in DEX volumes among major competitors. Since the start of the year, Solana has processed over $1.5 trillion in DEX volumes. By comparison, Ethereum has $938 billion in the same period. This difference underscores Solana’s high throughput and efficiency, even if the price is signaling differently.
A key driver on the structural side is the entry of institutional investors. In 2025, the U.S. SEC approved several spot ETFs on Solana. Bitwise launched BSOL on the NYSE with 100% direct SOL exposure and posted $56 million in volume on its first trading day. 21Shares followed with TSOL on the Cboe BZX, and ETFs under management are approaching $750 million.
Treasury programs have staked at least 12.5 million SOL, representing more than 3% of the circulating supply. These flows are shifting the investor base toward longer-term, regulated participants.
Solana’s role as infrastructure for stablecoins and tokenized real assets has grown. Stablecoin holdings on the chain rose significantly in 2025 and now stand at around $17 billion. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund and other institutional products tap the platform for Real-World Asset exposures. Anatoly Yakovenko predicts that total stablecoin volume across networks could exceed $1 trillion by 2026, which would be favorable for Solana’s stablecoin and RWA ambitions.
The Solana Foundation is collaborating with post-quantum security specialist Project Eleven and has launched a quantum-resistant testnet after a comprehensive risk assessment. The goal is to be prepared for potential threats from quantum computers and to strengthen the network’s long-term security.
Breakpoint 2025 in Abu Dhabi was the largest edition of Solana’s annual event to date. There, several partnerships with major financial institutions were announced, along with the expansion of the Helium network to Mexico and Brazil. The team also showcased new developer tools and infrastructure improvements to ease usage and boost performance. These announcements aim to reduce reliance on hype and broaden the basis for productive applications.
Despite price pressure, community interest remains high. In December 2025, Solana led the DeFi Social Activity Rankings with 58,800 posts and 14.7 million interactions within 24 hours. On Coinbase, retail investors have recently been net buyers, with about 82% of purchases and roughly 96% of SOL holders increasing their positions in the last 24 hours. This suggests a continued positive sentiment among retail investors even at lower price levels.
On the downside is the collapse of the memecoin market, which had driven a large share of Solana’s traffic and revenue in 2024 and early 2025; proponents argued memecoins served as a liveness test by demonstrating the network’s capacity under extreme load. Trading volumes in this segment have fallen by more than 90%. So far, the shift toward durable applications has not fully materialized.
Technically, the area around $120 remains a key support. Analysts see a resistance zone between $134 and $140. There are roughly $1 billion of leveraged short positions open, and a turn higher could trigger a short squeeze. Looking to 2026, institutional applications and infrastructure upgrades are expected to take center stage, with the Alpenglow update targeting 150-millisecond finalities and a growing ETF ecosystem potentially narrowing the gap between price action and fundamentals.
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