How does Solana make money? — The Full Story Explained

Network Transaction Fees

The primary way the Solana blockchain generates revenue is through transaction fees. Every time a user interacts with the network—whether sending SOL, swapping tokens, or interacting with a smart contract—they must pay a small fee. This fee is essential for preventing spam and compensating the infrastructure providers who maintain the ledger. In the fiscal year ending recently, Solana's diverse ecosystem generated approximately $2.85 billion in total revenue, driven largely by these micro-payments across millions of daily transactions.

Base Fees and Priority Fees

Solana utilizes a two-part fee structure. The base fee is a fixed cost per signature, ensuring that simple transfers remain incredibly cheap, often costing a fraction of a cent. However, during periods of high network congestion, users can opt to pay a "priority fee." This additional payment incentivizes validators to include their transaction in the next block more quickly. This mechanism has become a significant revenue driver, especially during high-traffic events like popular NFT mints or volatile trading sessions.

Fee Burning Mechanism

A unique aspect of Solana's economic model is how it handles these fees. Currently, 50% of the transaction fee is "burned," meaning it is permanently removed from the circulating supply. The other 50% is distributed to the validator who processed the transaction. This burning mechanism acts as a deflationary force, theoretically increasing the scarcity of SOL over time as network activity grows. By reducing the total supply, the protocol creates indirect value for all token holders, effectively capturing economic value from network usage.

Diverse Ecosystem Revenue

Unlike early blockchains that relied solely on simple transfers, Solana has evolved into a multi-faceted economy. Its revenue is spread across several high-growth sectors, including Decentralized Finance (DeFi), liquid staking, and consumer applications. In the past year, the network averaged nearly $240 million in monthly revenue, with peak months exceeding $600 million. This scale puts Solana's on-chain economy on par with major Web2 financial platforms like Robinhood or data analytics firms like Palantir.

Sector	Revenue Contribution	Primary Activity
Trading Platforms	~39% ($1.12B)	DEX swaps, perpetuals, and MEV
DeFi & Liquid Staking	Significant	Lending, borrowing, and yield farming
Meme Coins & NFTs	High Volatility	Speculative trading and minting fees
DePIN & AI	Emerging	Decentralized hardware and compute

Trading and DEX Activity

Professional-grade trading platforms and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are the largest contributors to Solana's bottom line. In 2025, these platforms saw a massive surge, processing over $100 billion in volume. The high throughput and low latency of the network make it an ideal "on-chain Nasdaq." For users interested in participating in this ecosystem, platforms like WEEX provide a secure entry point to manage digital assets. As trading liquidity deepens, the associated transaction fees and MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) tips continue to bolster the network's total revenue.

Staking and Inflation

While transaction fees represent "organic" revenue from users, the network also operates on an inflationary model to fund security. Solana uses a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism where SOL holders "stake" their tokens to validators. These validators are responsible for processing transactions and securing the network. In exchange for this service, the protocol issues new SOL tokens as rewards.

Validator Incentives

Validators earn money through a combination of protocol-issued rewards (inflation) and their share of transaction fees. This ensures that even if transaction volume is low, there is a financial incentive to keep the network running. As of 2026, the inflation rate follows a predetermined disinflationary schedule, gradually decreasing each year. This balance between new issuance and fee burning is central to Solana's long-term economic sustainability.

Liquid Staking Derivatives

The rise of liquid staking has added another layer to Solana's money-making engine. Users can stake their SOL and receive a liquid token in return, which can then be used in DeFi applications. This increases the velocity of capital within the ecosystem. More capital moving through DeFi protocols leads to more transactions, which in turn generates more fee revenue for the network. It is a virtuous cycle that has helped Solana's revenue grow over 200x compared to its early development stages.

Comparison with Ethereum

Solana's revenue growth has significantly outpaced the early years of Ethereum. During a similar stage of development, Ethereum's monthly revenues were often in the range of $10 million. In contrast, Solana has frequently exceeded these figures by 20 to 50 times in recent months. This is largely due to Solana's ability to handle a much higher volume of transactions at a lower cost, attracting a wider variety of applications.

Scalability and Volume

Ethereum generates high revenue by charging high fees per transaction on its base layer. Solana takes the opposite approach: it generates high revenue by processing a massive volume of very cheap transactions. This "high-volume, low-margin" business model is similar to how modern payment processors like Visa or Mastercard operate. By keeping costs low for the end-user, Solana encourages more frequent interactions, which ultimately leads to a larger aggregate revenue pool.

Application-Level Revenue

It is important to distinguish between network-level revenue (fees paid to the blockchain) and application-level revenue (fees paid to specific apps). In 2025, applications built on Solana generated nearly $2.4 billion in revenue. This indicates a healthy and decoupling economy where the value isn't just in the underlying token, but in the utility provided by the software built on top of it. This includes everything from AI-driven apps to Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN).

Future Revenue Streams

Looking ahead, Solana is expanding into new territories that could provide additional income. The integration of stablecoins has been a major success, with the supply on Solana reaching all-time highs recently. Stablecoin transfers generate consistent transaction fees and bring institutional liquidity to the chain. Furthermore, the growth of "wrapped" assets, such as Bitcoin on Solana, has increased trading volumes and associated fees.

Enterprise Partnerships

Solana's high performance makes it attractive for enterprise-level collaborations. As more traditional financial institutions look to settle transactions on-chain, Solana stands to benefit from massive increases in transaction volume. These partnerships often involve strategic integrations that drive network usage without requiring the heavy subsidies seen in the early days of crypto. The goal is to become the global infrastructure for real-time financial markets.

The Role of SOL

Ultimately, the SOL token is the lifeblood of this economy. It is used for gas fees, staking, and as a unit of account within the ecosystem. As the network captures more value from diverse sources like AI, DePIN, and global trading, the demand for SOL as a functional asset increases. For those looking at the market, the WEEX spot trading section offers a way to observe how these economic fundamentals reflect in asset pricing. By aligning the interests of users, developers, and validators, Solana has built a robust and diverse revenue engine that continues to scale.