July 1, 2026
Solana apps like Phantom, Pump.fun, and Jupiter now generate meaningfully more revenue than the chain itself. In May 2026, Solana apps generated ~$94M in monthly retained revenue versus ~$18.6M in Solana Real Economic Value (REV), a measure of chain fees plus MEV tips.
That gap has persisted even after chain fees normalized following the TRUMP/MELANIA memecoin frenzy in January 2025. In our view, the data suggests that Solana is increasingly behaving like a platform economy where applications capture multiple times more value than the base chain itself.
Note: Solana app fees and retained app revenue use DefiLlama's chain-filtered fees overview for Solana. Solana base-chain fees and revenue use DefiLlama's Solana chain fee summary. DefiLlama dailyRevenue means retained protocol or app revenue, not total user-paid fees, and protocol-level methodologies may differ by app. The Solana Chain Revenue proxy discussed here refers to Real Economic Value (REV), calculated as Solana base-chain fees plus Jito MEV Tips and Harmonic fees from the same DefiLlama app economics dataset.
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