SOL Weekly Data Report — August 24–30, 2026

2026-08-31 · Weekly Data Report · SolDataLab Research Desk

Our weekly quantitative pulse of the Solana network, covering the seven days through Sunday, August 30, 2026. Every figure below is compared against the prior week, with day-by-day detail and a trailing four-week view at the end. All data is cross-checked against Solscan, SolanaFM, DefiLlama, CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko; discrepancies between sources under 1% are normal.

Executive summary

A consolidation-at-higher-levels week, and the durable kind: SOL rose 4.4% to $198.70, usage held at the elevated baseline (374M non-vote transactions, 2.6M active addresses), TVL crossed $10.0B, and stablecoins ground higher — while fee revenue rose modestly with volume rather than congestion. No incidents, no fee spikes, no de-pegs. The headline of the week is procedural and structural at once: the SEC's spot SOL ETF review went active with the first comment letters, and TVL reclaimed a level not seen since early 2025.

1. Market snapshot

A steady, low-volatility week with a gentle upward bias. The +16.7% in 24-hour volume reflects genuine pickup as the ETF comment letters and the $200 test drew attention; seven-day volume rose 7.4%. Funding stayed mildly positive, indicating balanced positioning rather than a crowded rally, and SOL has now outperformed both majors for five straight weeks.

2. Network activity

The week answered the hold question: is the new baseline real? Daily volume never fell below 49M and summed to 374M, while new-address growth (+3.8%) again outpaced active-address growth (+4.0%) — onboarding, not just re-engagement. The peak of 56M is a touch above last week's 55M, but the band was steady rather than spiky, which is the signature of a base that has moved up and stayed up.

Day-by-day transaction path

The shape of the week is a plateau with a Friday ridge: transactions held in a 49M-56M band all week, with Friday's $200 test producing the only modest spike. The Saturday-to-Sunday pattern — high transaction counts with relatively lower address counts — remains characteristic of bot and script-heavy launchpad traffic, but the fee data below shows priority fees stayed well-contained. Daily active addresses are counted per day and therefore overlap across days; the 7-day active-address metric is de-duplicated.

3. DeFi

TVL reached $10.0B, a level not seen since early 2025, with perps volume growing fastest (+6.6%). Restaking growth re-accelerated to +5.2% after last week's deceleration — directionally positive, and the slope is back to compounding. The composition matters: DEX liquidity, lending and restaking all added capital, so this TVL print is deposit-led, not just a price markup.

How much of the TVL move is price?

SOL rose 4.4% during the week. If TVL had only moved with price, it would have grown roughly 4.4%; it grew 3.1%. The apparent 'under-shoot' is a math artifact: TVL is measured at end-of-week prices while our comparison uses last week's closing TVL, and part of last week's TVL already reflected the rising price. Net, the move is consistent with both price and modest net new deposits — about $150M of the $300M increase is plausibly fresh capital. Real, and consistent with the composition story.

4. Stablecoins

A fourth consecutive week of stablecoin growth, again led by USDC. The payments-corridor story flagged in the news review is now showing up as durable supply: three settlement corridors added in a single month, and USDC's share of the stack quietly rising. The next level to watch is $10B USDC — first time since late 2024 — now only a week or two away.

5. Fees and staking

Fee markets firmed modestly with volume: priority fees held at 0.00008 SOL, MEV tips rose 20% to $0.6M, and network fees rose 6.8% to $6.3M — all on rising transactions, none on congestion. This is the demand version of the fee story (last week was the capacity version, with fees falling as usage rose). Staking held at 65.7% with APY drifting down 0.1 pp, which is normal noise, not a trend.

Day-by-day fee pressure

The fee curve stayed flat: no day exceeded 0.00009 SOL, versus 0.00017 at the record-week peak two weeks ago. Sunday again processed heavy traffic at the week's lowest fee — the signature of high-frequency, fee-sensitive launchpad and payments traffic that Solana absorbs without premium. The volume-weighted weekly average lands at ~0.00008 SOL, matching the headline figure.

What the week tells us

Fastest-growing metrics

1. Perps volume: +6.6% — stickier than launchpad volume, the fastest mover of the week.
2. Jito MEV tips: +20% — timing-sensitive trading returned with volume.
3. DEX volume: +5.2% — broad-based spot activity.
4. Active addresses: +4.0% — usage held at the elevated baseline.
5. USDC supply: +3.2% — settlement and payments compounding.

Declining or flat

• Staking APY (-0.1 pp) — structural drift, not a concern.
• Priority fee (flat at 0.00008 SOL) — contained even on the $200 test day.
• 24h trading-volume comparison is a single-day artifact; 7d volume was up.

Anomalies and risks

No outages, no fee spikes, no stablecoin de-pegs — operationally boring in the best way. The one thing worth flagging is the mix: fee revenue rose with usage this week (healthy demand) rather than falling (capacity), but both readings confirm the fee economy is increasingly driven by economic activity rather than pure launchpad bursts. That is the structural improvement to track, and it would show up first in Jito tips staying elevated as transactions hold.

Trailing 4-week view

Five consecutive weeks of across-the-board growth, now with the rate of increase steady rather than spiky. A $10.0B TVL and a $198.7 SOL on rising usage — without any record-day spike — is the picture of a base that has moved up and stayed up. Synchronous, low-volatility growth is healthier than a V-shaped blow-off.

Reading the slope

• Price: $178.8 -> $198.7 (+11.1% over four weeks), with each weekly close above the last.
• USDC supply: +$1.0B over the month — the strongest sustained run of 2026.
• DEX volume: +22.6% over four weeks — steady, not steepening into a spike.
• Non-vote txs: +13.0% over four weeks — a step-change, now testing whether it holds.

Fee math: what a transfer actually costs

Roughly two cents per transaction — at the low end of the recent range, since average priority fees stayed flat while price rose. That fee efficiency remains Solana's structural advantage for high-frequency settlement, and it is the reason we report these numbers every week rather than just prices.

Indicator definitions and methodology

• Non-vote transactions: user and application transactions, excluding validator consensus votes (which dominate raw Solana transaction counts).
• Active addresses: unique addresses with at least one successful transaction in the period.
• Network fees: base fees + priority fees, in SOL, converted at the week's average price. Jito tips are reported separately as validator MEV income.
• Staking rate: staked SOL divided by total circulating supply.
• Average priority fee: the volume-weighted average of per-transaction priority fees across the week.
• Compute units (CU): the metered execution cost of a transaction; Solana caps CU per block, which is the real throughput constraint.
• Restaking TVL: value locked in Kamino and Sanctum restaking vaults, cross-checked against DefiLlama.
• Data reconciliation: all figures are pulled from Solscan, SolanaFM, Solana Beach, DefiLlama, CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko; where sources disagree by more than 1%, the discrepancy is flagged rather than averaged away.

Risk watch

• Fee-basis concentration: fee revenue still leans on launch-window bursts; if those fade without settlement growth replacing them, network fees could normalize lower — watch the mix, not just the level.
• Meme-cycle cooling: launchpad-driven activity can reverse as fast as it arrived; the leading indicator is Jito tips, which would fall before transaction counts do.
• Stablecoin reversal: two consecutive weeks of declining USDC supply would break the strongest fundamental story on the chain.
• Restaking outflow: early incentive-seeking deposits often rotate out; a sudden drawdown in Kamino/Sanctum vaults would look like risk-off, not a failure of the sector.
• ETF review: any comment-period surprise or extension would most directly hit price, with on-chain metrics lagging by days.

Bottom line

A consolidation-at-higher-levels week in the best sense: the elevated baseline held, TVL reclaimed $10B, stablecoins compounded, and the ETF process moved to active review. The fee mix shifted from capacity to demand without any congestion — a healthy evolution. The watch-items are the same ones we have flagged for weeks — fee-basis concentration, meme-cycle dependence, restaking flow durability — none of which flipped this week. Steady, healthy, boring.

Tags: NetworkDeFiStablecoinPriority FeesStaking