21Shares: Solana''s H1 2026 Network Revenue Fell 87% as Memecoin Fees Collapsed

The Solana SOL$102.38-0.8% blockchain generated $141 million in gross revenue during the first half of 2026, down 87.1% from the $1.09 billion recorded in H1 2025, according to a new earnings analysis published today by 21Shares AG, a Zurich-based crypto ETP issuer. Annualized, the current pace works out to $282 million, a fraction of the rate from one year earlier and a number that demands context to read correctly.

The analysis, authored by Matt Mena, Senior Research Associate at 21Shares, covers January through June 2026 using data from DeFiLlama, Token Terminal, Blockworks, and CoinGecko as of June 30, 2026.

Memecoin Fees Were 95% of H1 2025 Revenue. H1 2026 Was Built on Different Ground.

In H1 2025, 95% of Solana's gross revenue came from two sources: priority fees (40%) and Jito JTO$0.433-2.5% MEV tips (55%). Both are sensitive to speculative order-flow, particularly memecoin launches and bot competition for transaction ordering. When speculative volumes declined, the fees that depended on them followed.

The spot DEX composition shift makes the change visible. Per 21Shares, memecoins accounted for 40% of Solana's spot trading volume in H1 2025; by H1 2026, that had fallen to 16%, a 60% year-over-year decline. Stablecoin swaps moved in the opposite direction, rising from 6% to 19% of spot volume. General SOL trading grew from 41% to 53%. The mix shifted substantially, but stablecoin transactions generate lower fees per trade than speculative memecoin activity, so the revenue effect was not proportionate to the volume rebalancing.

Stablecoin Settlement on Solana: $1.9 Trillion on 5% of Global Supply

Solana's stablecoin metrics are harder to dismiss than the revenue headline. The 21Shares analysis shows stablecoin AUM on the network grew 51% year-over-year, from $10.4 billion to $15.7 billion. More striking is the settlement efficiency figure: Solana processed $1.9 trillion in stablecoin transactions in H1 2026, capturing 22.5% of global stablecoin transaction volume despite holding only approximately 5% of global stablecoin supply.

That ratio (5% of supply, 22.5% of transactions) reflects high-turnover use and low settlement cost per transaction, which make Solana attractive for payments and DeFi infrastructure where throughput per dollar of liquidity matters. The 21Shares report also notes that Solana generated roughly $15 million more in year-to-date revenue than Ethereum by mid-2026, while trading at approximately 22% of Ethereum's market capitalization.

Tokenized Equity Market Share: 7% to 97% via Securitize and Backpack Securities

The sharpest single-period change in the report is in tokenized real-world asset equities. Securitize listed its own corporate stock (SECZ) as a token on Solana, and Backpack Securities launched a stock-to-token conversion product. Combined with other tokenized equity launches across the half, these moves pushed Solana's share of on-chain spot tokenized equity trading from 7% in H1 2025 to 97% in H1 2026, according to 21Shares. Total spot DEX volume in tokenized equities reached $4.9 billion, a sixfold increase in six months.

Galaxy Research's Q2 2026 Solana analysis recorded RWAs crossing $3 billion through the end of Q2; the 21Shares H1 total of $4.9 billion places significant additional volume in the final weeks of June.

Solana DEX Volume vs. Market Cap: 36% of Global Spot at 9.5% of Smart-Contract Value

Solana held 36% or more of global spot DEX volume in H1 2026 while representing only 9.5% of total smart-contract blockchain market capitalization. Ethereum held 41.8% of smart-contract market cap and a lower 23.5% of spot DEX share. The 21Shares report calculates Solana's volume-to-price ratio at approximately 10.5x (each dollar of network valuation supporting roughly ten times the on-chain trading activity), against Ethereum's 1.5x ratio.

Per 21Shares, developer activity on Solana grew 21% year-over-year through H1 2026, and assets denominated in SOL increased 13% over the same period.

What $282 Million Annualized Means for Solana's Revenue Model

The $282 million annualized run rate lands alongside a structural protocol change. SIMD-550, a recently approved governance proposal, doubles the network's annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30% and moves the terminal inflation target from H1 2032 to H1 2029, reducing the long-term SOL issuance schedule. Alpenglow, the planned consensus upgrade expected in late 2026, targets transaction finality at approximately 150 milliseconds.

21Shares identifies three competitive risks for the period ahead: Canton in RWA settlement infrastructure, Hyperliquid and Robinhood Chain in trading, and Tempo in stablecoin infrastructure. The report also notes an August 2026 network routing failure that took approximately 29% of staked SOL offline for roughly 40 minutes before recovery. One caveat to the memecoin-departure narrative: by August 2026, after the H1 window this report covers, memecoins had rebounded to approximately 34% of Solana's DEX volume, suggesting the speculative activity cycle has not fully left the network.

Solana Compass DEX analytics show the scale of that volume recovery: swap volume averaged $7.1 billion per day across the final two weeks of August, reaching $7.9 billion on August 27 and 28.

21Shares, which manages more than $5 billion in crypto ETP assets, separately notes that the Solana spot ETF launched in October 2025 accumulated approximately $1.3 billion in AUM, with Goldman Sachs listed as the largest institutional holder.