On Aug. 4, 2026, Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) broke its all-time record for activity on its blockchain, recording 169.9 million transactions, according to data from Blockworks. Breaking that record has happened repeatedly this year, even as the coin’s price fell. As of Aug. 27, it’s still 63% below its peak price in January 2025.
So is the coin worth buying now that it’s clearly gaining some traction? Or is it better to sell it because its transaction activity hasn’t been closely tied to its price this year?
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Tokenized stocks hit a record $5.8 billion in volume
One of the factors in favor of buying Solana on the basis of its increasing on-chain activity is that the composition of its transaction volume changed a lot this year. In doing so, it supported a core part of the bull thesis.
Tokenized stocks are essentially blockchain tokens that are backed by shares of public companies, and as a group, they’re one of the most anticipated drivers of growth on Solana.
The network’s decentralized exchanges reported about $5.8 billion in tokenized equity volume in the second quarter, a jump of 114% over the prior quarter, a new all-time high for the category. That’s so large an increase over the same quarter in 2025 ($1.3 million) that the percentage of growth isn’t meaningful to calculate. In Q2 of this year, an estimated 95% of on-chain tokenized equity trading ran through Solana, per data from Crypto Briefing, so the chain appears to be capturing the segment almost without contest.
Perpetual futures contracts are the second avenue that’s creating a lot of traffic.
In Q2, Solana saw $148 billion in perpetuals volume, its most ever. Solana’s exchanges have cleared around $1.1 trillion in cumulative all-time perpetuals volume as of Aug. 25, a tally that’s No. 2 for the category in the entire crypto sector, behind only Hyperliquid.
Rising activity isn’t guaranteed to accrue to price
The weak link in the bull thesis is that Solana’s holders are not necessarily gaining much directly from the activity.
Per DefiLlama, Solana’s network fees fell 44% quarter over quarter in Q2, reaching $41 million. What’s more, only a small portion of each transaction is destroyed, which means that the coin’s utilization doesn’t really cut down on its constant issuance of new supply. This month, though, the coin’s price does appear to be reacting strongly to the new highs in activity, climbing 46% in just the 30-day period ending Aug. 27. These highs likely portend more capital and even more activity coming to the network, and soon.
