SOL is trading around $80–85 at the time of writing, well off the highs it posted just months ago. Crypto markets have been broadly weak, and Solana hasn't been spared.
For traders and investors sitting on SOL positions, the question worth asking is whether this is purely a market-wide reaction or something more specific to Solana itself.
The honest answer is that it's both.
According to Messari’s latest report, fewer people are using the Solana network compared to a few months ago. Daily fee payers dropped nearly 20% quarter-over-quarter in Q4 2025, and non-vote transactions fell by a similar margin.
Image via Messari
Total Value Locked, which measures capital sitting in Solana's DeFi protocols, also slid over 30% during the quarter to $8 billion. Much of the earlier activity was speculation-driven. Meme coin trading and token launches spiked around events like the TRUMP token launch in early 2025.
Once that settled, the numbers followed. For short-term traders, cooling network usage is worth factoring into any position you're considering.
Pull back from the short-term data and a different picture emerges. Stablecoins on Solana reached an all-time high of $14.9 billion in Q4 2025, with USDC accounting for $10 billion of that.
Image via Messari
Stablecoin growth signals that capital is staying on the network even as prices slide—that's not what you'd see if people were simply walking away.
Real-world assets—tokenized Treasury funds and private credit products from names like BlackRock—crossed $1.1 billion, up nearly 59% quarter-over-quarter. That's institutional capital, a different and more stable category of demand compared to retail speculation.
Image via Messari
Five new spot SOL ETFs launched in Q4 2025, pushing cumulative ETF flows to $1 billion. These products give traditional investors exposure to SOL without holding the token directly, which brings a meaningfully wider pool of buyers into the picture over time.
Firedancer, a high-performance validator client built by Jump Crypto, has been running on mainnet for over 100 days. This gives Solana two independent clients for the first time, improving network resilience.
More significant is Alpenglow, a new consensus protocol expected in Q1 or Q2 2026. It targets transaction finality of 100–150 milliseconds, down from the current 12–13 seconds.
For anyone using Solana-based trading platforms, that means faster execution and less uncertainty when a transaction is in flight.
$100 remains the key price level. SOL hasn't been able to reclaim it, and doing so would be the clearest sign that sentiment is turning. ETF inflow data and continued growth in stablecoins and RWAs are also worth monitoring.
If those trends hold, they suggest more durable demand building beneath the surface. This matters a lot more for where SOL goes over the next several months than short-term price swings do.
SOL Statistics Data
SOL Market Cap: $46.25B
SOL Circulating Supply: 568.23M
SOL Total Supply: 620.66M
SOL Market Ranking: #7
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