Crypto: Solana breaks activity record despite 33% drop

The price of the crypto SOL collapsed by 33% in the first quarter of 2026. Yet, behind this brutal decline, the Solana network has never been so active. How to explain this paradox?

Solana displays historic crypto activity despite the SOL collapse

The Messari report on Solana’s status in Q1 2026, published in early May, paints an unexpected picture. While SOL lost a third of its value between January and March 2026, the network simultaneously recorded its highest level of activity in its entire history.

The most striking figure: 112.6 million daily transactions excluding votes, up 50% from Q4 2025 and 15% above the previous record set in Q2 2025. In other words, never before have so many transactions passed through Solana in a single day.

The “chain GDP,” a term used by Messari to denote the total revenue from applications, remained practically unchanged at $342.2 million, a remarkable stability in a bearish market.

On the applications side, Pump.fun retains first place with $124.7 million in revenue, up 17%. Axiom, a trading platform, rises to second position with $42.4 million (+36%). 

The revelation of the quarter remains Bags, an application allowing transaction fee sharing on social networks. Its revenues exploded by 1,347% to reach $11.5 million, driven by the frenzy around open source AI-related cryptos in January.

Finally, the Real Economic Value (REV), which measures MEV fees and tips paid to validators, barely declined by 1% to $89.5 million. Solana thus retains second place globally on this indicator, just behind Hyperliquid and its $156 million, a competitor that briefly surpassed Solana in fully diluted valuation (FDV) on May 21, 2026, a sign that the on-chain revenue battle is intensifying.

RWAs and stablecoins confirm the ecosystem’s growing maturity

Beyond transaction volumes, the first quarter marks a significant milestone for Solana in the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs). The market value of these assets on the network increased by 43% in one quarter to surpass the symbolic threshold of $2 billion.

The tokenized monetary fund BUIDL by BlackRock doubled to reach $525.4 million, after integrating Anchorage Digital’s custody service, which now holds about 81% of the total supply on the network. 

Additionally, Ondo launched over 200 tokenized US stocks and ETFs on Solana, including a tokenization the same day as BitGo’s IPO on the NYSE.

Regarding stablecoins, the overall capitalization remained just below $15 billion, but its composition evolved. USDC fell 21% to $7.83 billion while retaining 53% market share, while USDT rose 34% to $2.89 billion. 

Even more surprising: World Liberty Financial’s dollar jumped 473% to reach $883.5 million, driven by the reallocation of Binance clients’ holdings towards Solana.

DeFi TVL fell 22% to $6.16 billion, but the data is clear: this decline reflects SOL depreciation, not user disinterest. Solana’s share of global DeFi TVL remained almost stable, moving from 6.9% to 6.7%.

In summary, the first quarter illustrates a truth that investors often tend to forget: the price of an asset and the health of its network are two different things. Solana is the perfect demonstration of this. The crypto ecosystem continues to densify, attract institutional players and break its own activity records, regardless of market turbulences.