Solana (SOL) is the native cryptocurrency of Solana, a layer-1 blockchain that launched in March 2020.
The network processes transactions and smart contracts, with SOL used to pay network fees and secure the chain through staking. As of 2026-08-31, SOL traded at approximately $103.28, with a market capitalization of about $60.67 billion, down 65.07% from its all-time high of $295.69. The Solana ecosystem supports decentralized finance, payments, and other on-chain applications.
Solana differentiates itself among layer-1 blockchains through high throughput and low transaction costs, supporting applications that require frequent, fast on-chain activity.
This design has attracted substantial usage: the ecosystem held approximately $27.14 billion in total value locked, generated about $672,630 in daily fees, and served roughly 2,078,143 daily active addresses as of August 30, 2026. SOL captures this activity directly, as it is the asset used to pay fees and stake across the network, tying holder economics to network usage.
SOL is a utility token that also carries governance weight through validator and staker participation.
Holders use SOL to pay transaction and program-execution fees, and to stake with validators to help secure the network and earn staking rewards. Staked SOL backs Solana's Proof of Stake consensus, weighting a validator's block-production and voting influence by the amount of SOL delegated to it. In August 2026, staked SOL was also used directly in an on-chain governance vote (SGP-0002) that changed the network's issuance schedule.
SOL has no fixed maximum supply. Circulating supply was approximately 585.1 million SOL and total supply approximately 633.0 million SOL as of 2026-08-31.
Net emission is disinflationary: annual issuance decreases over time toward a terminal inflation floor. An August 2026 on-chain vote (SGP-0002) doubled the annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%, projected to cut future issuance by approximately 18.9 million SOL over six years.
Solana's founding work began around 2017 with Anatoly Yakovenko's Proof of History concept, and its mainnet launched in March 2020. A public token sale held March 24-29, 2020 raised approximately $1.76 million by selling 8,000,000 SOL at $0.22 each.
This followed earlier private rounds: a 2018 seed round (~$25 million) and a 2019 Series A (~$20 million) led by Multicoin Capital and Coinbase Ventures. Total capital raised across all rounds is reported at approximately $359.7 million, including a $314.15 million private token sale in July 2021 led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain.
Solana operates as its own layer-1 blockchain, combining Proof of History (PoH) with Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus.
PoH creates a verifiable, cryptographic sequence of timestamps that lets validators order transactions before consensus is reached, while PoS-based voting among validators, weighted by staked SOL, finalizes blocks. This combination is designed to support high transaction throughput and fast finality.
Solana was created by Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder and CEO of Solana Labs, who previously worked on operating systems at Qualcomm, distributed systems at Mesosphere, and compression at Dropbox.
Two organizations share responsibility for Solana today.
Solana historically relied on off-chain, informal governance, with protocol changes driven by validator-operator consensus around Solana Improvement Documents rather than formal token voting.
This changed on August 27, 2026, when SGP-0002 ("Double Disinflation") passed as Solana's first formal on-chain governance vote, with about 67% support from roughly 60.7% of eligible staked SOL, exceeding the required one-third quorum and two-thirds supermajority threshold. Major validators and entities including Kraken, Galaxy Digital, and Drift Protocol reportedly shifted their votes late, helping the proposal pass.
SGP-0002, an on-chain governance proposal that doubles Solana's annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%, passed on August 27, 2026.
In late 2025 and 2026, U.S. spot Solana exchange-traded funds launched, including Bitwise's BSOL (October 28, 2025), Grayscale's converted GSOL, Fidelity's FSOL, and VanEck's VSOL, with combined U.S. spot SOL ETF assets reported near $1.4 billion by August 30, 2026.
Solana's core protocol has been audited multiple times, including three Kudelski Security audits between 2020 and 2021 and a Trail of Bits audit dated February 2023. Audit reports are published in a public repository.
Beyond the core protocol, the wider ecosystem has recorded roughly 26 application-layer exploits since 2020, including the approximately $320 million Wormhole bridge hack, with aggregated ecosystem losses exceeding $530 million through April 2025. Solana has also experienced network outages, including a 17-hour halt in September 2021 and an August 13, 2026 incident that took about 14.6% of validators offline without a full network halt.
