SOL staking volume hits a new all-time high of 409 million tokens. What signals are being released by Solana's fundamentals?

Although the recent SOL price has been under continuous pressure, on-chain data from the Solana network presents a completely different picture. The latest data shows that the staked amount of Solana has risen to 409 million SOL, reaching a new all-time high, indicating that network security and long-term participation are still strengthening. This change has attracted market attention: in the context of a sluggish price, are investors ignoring the important signals released by Solana’s fundamentals?

From a network perspective, a high staking rate means more SOL is locked up to maintain the network’s consensus mechanism, which helps enhance Solana’s resistance to attacks and overall stability. For long-term holders, the continuously increasing staked SOL is often seen as a sign of confidence in the ecosystem and is also one of the key indicators of the health of the public chain.

However, the growth in staking also comes with controversy. To promote sustainable staking economics, the Solana Foundation has gradually phased out subsidies for some validators and significantly reduced the amount of SOL delegated to small validators, from about 85 million to 23 million. While this adjustment reduces the Foundation’s direct intervention in the network, it has also led to the exit of many small validators, causing the number of Solana validators to plummet from around 2,500 to 800, raising concerns about decreased decentralization. In comparison, Ethereum has nearly 1 million validators, with clear advantages in decentralization and security redundancy.

Meanwhile, Solana continues to perform well in the real-world assets (RWA) sector. As the demand for tokenized RWA such as on-chain stocks, credit products, and money markets increases, the number of Solana RWA holders has surpassed 115,000, growing about 11% in the past 30 days. This data indicates that even in a generally sluggish market, the Solana ecosystem continues to attract new users.

However, from a capital perspective, the net inflow of Solana RWA still lags behind major competitors. In Q4 2025, the net inflow of Solana RWA was about $216 million, while Ethereum and BNB Chain both exceeded $1 billion. This shows that Solana has an advantage in user numbers, but there is still room to improve the concentration of high-net-worth funds and the depth of capital.

Overall, the record high in SOL staking and the growth of RWA users highlight the resilience of Solana’s fundamentals. However, the contradiction between the risk of validator centralization and long-term price correction remains a key factor that the market cannot ignore when assessing Solana’s future trajectory.