Solana continues to strengthen its position as one of the fastest blockchains in the industry. In August, the network demonstrated record-breaking throughput, surpassing 107,540 transactions per second (TPS) during a stress test.
Record Stress Test: How It Happened
According to Mert Mumtaz, co-founder of the infrastructure provider Helius, on August 17 a Solana block processed 43,016 transactions, of which only 50 failed.
However, it is important to note that most of these transactions were “empty” (no-op). Such transactions do not perform computations but instead test the network’s technical limits. Thanks to this, the network reached over 100,000 TPS.
Mumtaz noted that even without “booster” transactions, Solana is theoretically capable of sustaining loads of 80,000–100,000 TPS for real operations — such as transfers, oracle updates, and other standard actions.
Real Throughput
Despite the impressive test numbers, the network’s everyday performance is significantly more modest.
According to Solscan data, Solana’s current average TPS is about 3,700.
Two-thirds of these are validator service transactions, necessary for consensus but providing no user-facing value.
Analysts estimate the real “applied” throughput to be around 1,004–1,050 transactions per second.
For comparison: on Ethereum’s mainnet, this figure is on average 59 times lower.
Network Activity Growth
Solana’s infrastructure continues to expand, and user activity is growing:
- The number of active addresses reached 80.9 million over the past month.
- The total number of transactions hit 2.4 billion.
These figures show that Solana remains one of the most in-demand ecosystems in Web3, second only to Ethereum in total project capitalization.
Solana and DeFi: Growth Drivers
The main sources of activity on the network remain DeFi applications and meme coins.
- Pump.fun — a service for creating meme coins, gaining popularity among the crypto community.
- Jupiter — the leading DEX aggregator, providing the largest trading volume and integrating with numerous projects.
According to DeFi Llama, Solana’s TVL exceeded $10.4 billion. This is only 11% below the all-time high of $11.7 billion recorded in January 2025.
Economy and SOL Token Price
Against the backdrop of active ecosystem growth, the price of Solana’s native token, SOL, remains volatile.
At the time of writing, the token trades at $181.
Over the past 24 hours, SOL fell by 5.7% following the general crypto market correction, according to CoinGecko.
Nevertheless, analysts believe that in the long term, the combination of high network performance and a well-developed DeFi ecosystem could drive further growth in value.
