Solana processed 5.2 billion transactions after revenue collapsed 87% – here’s what changed

Solana says it processed a record 5.2 billion non-vote transactions in August, a total it described as 19% above July.The milestone arrived with a sharply different measure: 21Shares calculated that gross network revenue, including fees and tips generated by network use, fell to $141 million in the first half of 2026 from $1.09 billion a year earlier.The figures cover different periods. The transaction count captures the month ended Aug. 31, while the revenue comparison covers the six months through June. Together, they show activity accelerating after a half-year in which Solana generated far less fee and tip revenue than during the memecoin boom a year earlier.Why Solana’s activity and revenue divergedNon-vote transactions remove validators' consensus messages from the count, giving a cleaner view of application activity. The metric can still include successful and failed transactions, and it measures neither unique users nor value transferred. Identifying transfers, trades and other actions requires program-level analysis, according to documentation from Dune and Token Terminal.21Shares traced the revenue decline to weaker competition for blockspace. It said priority fees and Ji...