Report: Solana Activity Hits Record High Despite SOL’s 33% Q1 Drop

Despite weak market conditions, Solana's app revenue remained stable at more than $342 million.

SOL fell 33 percent to around $83 in the first quarter of 2026, but Mesari's Q1 Solana State report tells a much harder story to dismiss than the price chart suggests.

While dollar-value numbers are down across the board, the network has set new records for daily transaction volume, grown its real-world asset market to more than $2 billion, and barely budgeted on the revenue stream.

Record activity, depreciation

The headline figure from the report is an all-time high for average daily non-voice transactions: 112.6 million, up 50% from last quarter and 15% more than the previous record in Q2 2025.

This means that more transactions occurred on Solana each day in Q1 than at any point in the network's history, which is at odds with the decline. Meanwhile, chain GDP, which is Messari's term for total app revenue, remained nearly flat at $342.2 million, up slightly from $341.8 million in Q4 2025.

According to the report, Pump.fun is still the largest single source of revenue at $124.7 million, which is an improvement of 17% over the quarter. In second place was Axiom, a business app with a 36% jump, earning $42.4 million.

However, the most impressive mover was a launchpad that allowed users to share business payments through social media accounts called Wallets. Memecoins, which are tied to open-source AI projects, rose 1,347% to $11.5 million in revenue after a strong trading session in January.

That pace hasn't continued, with bags revenue dropping 85% month-over-month through February, making the show another example of how quickly things can spin in Solana's application layer.

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On the other hand, DeFi TVL fell 22% quarter-on-quarter to $6.16 billion, a drop that directly reflects price reductions in SOL rather than any influx of users. Solana's share of total Defy TVL moved slightly, moving from 6.9% to 6.7%, while Camino regained its protocol position at $1.72 billion, eclipsing Jupiter at $1.69 billion.

Drift's performance was hit by a $285 million exploit, a sophisticated social engineering operation linked to threat actors linked to the North Korean state.

Looking at real economic value, which basically accounts for the actual fees and MEV recommendations, the report showed a decline of 1% to $89.5 million. That figure puts Solana in second place among all networks, behind Hyperliquid's $156 million.

RWAs are at the forefront.

If one story defined Q1 beyond the bear market backdrop, it was real-world assets. On Solana, the market value increased 43% quarter-over-quarter to $2.01 billion.

BlackRock's BUIDL token money market fund grew to $525.4 million after adding Anchorage Digital Protection, the latter of which accounted for 81 percent of the network's offering at the end of the quarter.

Meanwhile, Ondo Finance has launched 200-plus tokenized US stocks and ETFs on Solana, including a same-day tokenization of BitGo stock on the day of the company's NYSE IPO.

Finally, when the stable coin on the platform remained below 15 billion dollars, the formula changed. USDC is down 21% to $7.83 billion but remains the largest at 53% of the total, while USDT is up 34% to $2.89 billion.

At the same time, World Liberty Financial's capital rose 1,473% to $883.5 million, largely on the back of Binance moving client holdings to Solana.