Market tone: Bullish
Estefano Gomez · Crypto Briefing · 2026-10-09T21:29:02.000Z
Solana logo, official brand asset from solana.com/branding. Alpenglow is a Solana consensus upgrade.
Blockworks data shows a daily rebound after three weeks of decline, though quarterly figures tell a more volatile story
Solana’s token holders are getting paid again. According to analytics from Blockworks, daily token holder net income on the network has stayed above $400,000 for two straight weeks.
That streak follows three weeks of decline.
What the number actually measures
Blockworks starts with a metric called Real Economic Value, or REV. It captures what users pay to use the network, including transaction fees and tips.
From there, Blockworks subtracts operator payments, meaning the costs tied to validators and the operators who run the network’s infrastructure. The formula is simple: Token Holder Net Income = REV minus Operator Payments.
What’s left is the return flowing to SOL holders, both those who stake their tokens and those who don’t.
The quarterly picture is messier
Zoom out, and the story gets less tidy. Blockworks’ quarterly figures show just how much Solana’s holder economics can swing.
During strong stretches of network activity in 2025, quarterly token holder income landed somewhere between $50 million and $100 million.
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Q2 2026 looked very different. Token holder income for that quarter came in at approximately -$3.5 million, according to Blockworks data.
Why Blockworks’ framing matters
Blockworks has built dashboards that track Solana’s financials in this income-statement style, covering both daily earnings and quarterly results. The approach treats a blockchain less like a tech project and more like a business with revenue, costs, and margins.
What this means for SOL holders
Two weeks above $400,000 a day suggests user activity has picked back up, and that the network is generating more value than it spends on operators.
For stakers in particular, this is the metric that connects network usage to their returns.
Still, quarterly results remain well below the $50 million to $100 million range Solana posted during its stronger 2025 periods. And the Q2 2026 loss is a fresh reminder that this number can turn negative when conditions sour.
There are two levers worth watching. The first is demand: whether transaction fees and tips keep climbing as users return. The second is cost: whether operator payments to validators and infrastructure providers stay in check, or grow faster than revenue.
Solana has positioned itself as a high-throughput, low-fee chain. Low fees attract users, but they also mean the network needs a lot of activity to generate meaningful revenue for holders. The swings in Blockworks’ data reflect that trade-off in real time.
Originally published by Crypto Briefing.