Galaxy Research: Solana Held DEX #1 for Seven Consecutive Quarters as RWAs Crossed $3 Billion

Galaxy Research published its Q2 2026 Solana report on August 10, documenting a network that held its core leads while absorbing a broad pullback in transaction fees and trading activity. SOL (SOL) spot DEX volume fell 45% quarter over quarter to its lowest level since Q3 2024, network fees declined 44%, and TVL contracted 14%. At the same time, real-world asset supply on Solana crossed $3 billion for the first time in June, pushing RWAs to 24% of total TVL.

Galaxy Research's framing for the quarter is direct: "Capability now runs ahead of adoption, and H2 2026 will test whether that gap closes."

Solana Extended DEX Leadership to Seven Consecutive Quarters, at a Declining Volume Base

Solana held the top position in global spot DEX volume for the seventh straight quarter, per Galaxy Research. Volume itself fell 45% quarter over quarter to levels not seen since Q3 2024, and market share slipped six percentage points to 30%.

The mix of what is being traded has shifted, per Galaxy Research. SOL-stablecoin swaps now dominate activity, with memecoins accounting for 15-20% and tokenized stocks and wrapped assets roughly 10%. The priority fee spikes of 2025, tied closely to memecoin congestion, have receded, and Solana's DEX volume now reflects a broader but quieter base.

Solana Compass's daily swap tracking covers the same period from a different angle. Spot volumes on-chain ran $1.8 to 3.6 billion per day through May and June before rebounding sharply past $6 billion per day in late July, suggesting Q2 represented a trough rather than a directional change.

Application fees maintained a separate streak: $552 million in Q2, the tenth consecutive quarter leading all chains, per Galaxy Research. That share has compressed, from 48% of multi-chain application fees in Q1 2025 to 23% in Q2 2026. Pump.fun (Pump.fun) generated $212 million of that total, or 38% of non-MEV, non-staking application fees. No other single application approached that figure.

Network Fees Declined 44% and What It Means for Stakers

Network fees on Solana fell 44% quarter over quarter to approximately $155 million, with the network's share of multi-chain fee revenue dropping from 26.6% to 17.3%, per Galaxy Research. That share now sits below Q4 2025's 18.9%. Two factors contributed, per the report: a broad retreat in crypto transaction activity and the decline in memecoin congestion that had driven priority fee spikes through 2025.

For stakers, the impact is direct. Galaxy Research reports that SOL staking yield fell approximately 7% quarter over quarter, with inflation-derived rewards comprising roughly 90% of total staking yield. Fee-derived income remains a small share of validator revenue.

Two governance proposals entered formal review on August 3. SIMD-550, proposed by Helius, targets a doubling of the annual disinflation rate, setting terminal inflation at 1.5% by 2029. SIMD-553, from Temporal, proposes resource-based burned fees of 7,500 to 9,000 SOL per day, equivalent to roughly 12-15% of current issuance per Galaxy Research. Both proposals carry material implications for long-run staker economics. The Jito Q2 2026 token holder report, published separately, found that Jito protocol revenue fell 45% over the same period.

RWAs Crossed $3 Billion for the First Time, With Most Still Outside DeFi

Solana's real-world asset supply crossed $3 billion for the first time in June 2026, per Galaxy Research, with RWAs now accounting for 24% of the network's total value locked. The category's internal composition has shifted: public equities have overtaken private credit as the largest RWA bucket, driven by growth in tokenized stock products from Securitize (Securitize), Backpack (Backpack), and others.

Jupiter JUP$0.181-2.2% (Jupiter) and Kamino Finance KMNO$0.018+0.2% (Kamino Finance) together hold 83% of tokenized-stock collateral currently deployed as DeFi collateral, per Galaxy Research. Only approximately 9% of total tokenized RWA supply is actively working in DeFi (16% if issuer reserves are excluded). The remaining supply sits in wallets, unleveraged and undeployed.

Galaxy Research puts the gap plainly: "Most tokenized value on Solana remains idle. Lending markets have not yet converted the network's growing tokenized asset and stablecoin base into durable borrowing demand."

The Q2 infrastructure buildout points toward what closing that gap requires. In May, Securitize, Jump Trading, and Jupiter launched a regulated equity stack using PropAMM liquidity. Backpack Securities and Sunrise opened a broker-dealer structure in June, applying UCC Article 8 treatment to tokenized equity positions. Galaxy's GLXY token went live as collateral on Kamino Finance via Superstate in April, one of the first examples of a tokenized equity productively deployed in Solana lending.

Stablecoin Supply Held at $15.6 Billion as USDC Lost 30 Points of Share

Solana's stablecoin supply grew 1.9% quarter over quarter to $15.6 billion in Q2 2026, per Galaxy Research, keeping the network's global stablecoin market share at approximately 5%. Tron and Ethereum remain the dominant stablecoin chains.

The internal composition shifted considerably. USDC (USDC) held 77% of Solana stablecoin supply in Q1 2025. By Q2 2026, that share compressed to 47%, as USDT (USDT), USD1, USDG, and PYUSD each captured meaningful ground, per Galaxy Research.

GMTrade Farming Inflated Perpetuals Volume to $111 Billion

The headline perpetuals figure for Q2 requires adjustment. Total perpetuals volume reached $111 billion, roughly double Q1, but approximately $90 billion came from GMTrade, a platform whose open interest was flat over the same period, identifying the activity as airdrop farming rather than genuine trading, per Galaxy Research. Excluding GMTrade, perpetuals volume fell 43% quarter over quarter.

Solana holds approximately 1% of the global perpetuals market by volume and open interest, per Galaxy Research. Hyperliquid dominates, with its HIP-3 program reaching $3.2 billion in open interest by June, driven by TradeXYZ activity.

Within Solana, Phoenix (Phoenix) grew 14x in perpetuals volume to approximately $700 million, with open interest rising 5x to above $5 million. Drift Protocol DRIFT$0.012-10.7% (Drift Protocol) suffered the quarter's most significant setback: a $285 million exploit on April 1, the largest single DeFi hack of 2026 per Galaxy Research, which suspended trading without meaningful recovery through quarter end.

DFlow (DFlow) launched a composability product during Q2: Kalshi prediction market positions made available as SPL tokens, tradeable, lendable, and usable as collateral. Jito JTO$0.545-3.1% (Jito) opened early access to JTX, its self-custody trading platform, in June.

TVL Declined 14% to $12.5 Billion While Global Share Held at 7%

Solana's total value locked fell 14% quarter over quarter to $12.5 billion, per Galaxy Research, but the network's share of global TVL held flat at approximately 7%. The $3 billion in RWA supply now accounts for nearly a quarter of that TVL base.

Network reliability held through the quarter. Solana ran without a network-wide outage for the ninth consecutive quarter, per Galaxy Research, maintaining the 400ms slot target throughout. Agave v4.2 targets a reduction to 200ms slots, phased across four epochs, per Galaxy Research. Compute limits expanded from 60 million to 100 million compute units on July 30 via SIMD-0286.

Galaxy Research describes the Q2 condition as a "capability now runs ahead of adoption" problem. The RWA milestone crossed, the prediction markets launched, the equity stacks deployed, but aggregate fees, volume, and TVL each declined. The network's advantage, the report argues, will depend increasingly on the assets and applications that choose to build on it, not on blockspace availability alone. Galaxy notes: "Solana's edge will increasingly be its ability to host quality assets people want to trade rather than just being the cheapest and most performant chain."

Birdeye's H1 2026 Solana report, published in June, placed Solana at 54% of global spot DEX share on a half-year basis and found tokenized equity up 6x, a longer-horizon frame that places Galaxy's Q2 pullback within a broader growth trend.