Solana app fees decline for third quarter in a row

Revenue from applications on the Solana network continues to decline. For the third consecutive quarter, fees have fallen, this time by 10% to $795 million. Onchain activity remains largely stable, but Solana’s fee economy continues to rely heavily on speculation. Notable detail: five of the top ten fee-generating apps are directly linked to memecoins.

Solana is available at OKX and Bybit.

Fees decline, but activity remains steady

According to data from Galaxy Research, based on figures from DeFiLlama up to 29 April 2026, the total fees from the top ten Solana apps in Q1 2026 amount to $795 million. That is a decrease of 10% compared to the previous quarter. For comparison: in Q1 2025, this amount peaked at approximately $1.5 billion, and has been declining each quarter since then.

Onchain activity on the Solana network itself remains fairly stable, indicating that users continue to use the network. However, this activity is increasingly translating into lower fee revenue. That raises questions about the quality and sustainability of that activity.

Memecoins dominate the fee economy

The largest fee generators on Solana are platforms such as Pump, Jupiter, Meteora, Axiom Pro and Raydium. Five of these top ten apps are directly linked to the memecoin market. That means a large portion of Solana’s economic activity is driven by speculative behaviour around tokens with no fundamental value.

This is a concern for the long-term health of the ecosystem. As long as fee revenue remains so heavily dependent on memecoins, the network is vulnerable to periods of lower speculative interest. The Solana price stands at $70.39 at the time of writing, an increase of 6.6% in the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, Solmate’s share recently lost more than 98% of its value after a failed pivot to Solana, highlighting how large the risks in this ecosystem can be.