With ETFs in Sight, Solana’s Latest Network Health Report Is Upbeat

With Solana Exchange Traded Funds in the offing, the No. 6 blockchain by market capitalization is booming, according to the Solana Foundation’s June 2025 Solana Network Health Report.

It’s by far the leader in application revenue, consistently beating Ethereum for at least seven months, and in several cases absolutely demolishing it, according to the report. App revenue has exceeded $1 billion for two consecutive quarters.

App revenue by chain. Source: Blockworks

Network performance has continued to improve, the report said, citing 100% uptime for the past 16 months, including in January when there was the notably high network activity, with $39 billion in daily DEX volumes.

The blockchain network continues to lead in terms of performance, processing about 1,100 transactions per second, compared to Ethereum’s 14, Sui’s 48 and Base’s 77, the report noted.

Solana validator health is also “thriving” the report said, with real economic value (REV) hitting an all-time high of about $56.9 million on Jan. 19, and quarterly REV averaging $800 million in Q4 2024 and Q1 2025.

Solana network REV. Source: Blockworks

Solana is also one of the most decentralized proof-of-stake networks, with 1,295 validators across 40 countries. That said, that number is down substantially from about 1,900 since the last Network Health Report. It also compares to Ethereum’s nearly 10,000 validators.

The Solana Foundation also highlighted Solana’s developer growth and retention, pointing to its No. 1 position for new developer growth in 2024, with more than 7,600 joining the network last year, and 3,200 monthly active developers.

“Developers are key for value creation on a network,” the report said. “They build the apps that bring in the users; and with new users come even more developers. New developers joining (and current developers staying) is a leading signal of a healthy network.”

Alpenglow

The proposed Alpenglow hard fork is expected to cut the time it takes for blocks to finalize to as little as 150 milliseconds, fast enough for the Layer 1 chain to compete with Layer 2s for high-speed trading applications.

It ditches proof-of-history for proof-of-stake and “will be a turning point for Solana,” said Roger Wattenhofer, Quentin Kniep and Kobi Sliwinski, cofounders of Solana Labs spinoff Anza, in a May 19 blog post, “Alpenglow is not only a new consensus protocol, but the biggest change to Solana’s core protocol since, well, ever.”

ETF Extravaganza

There are currently eight Solana spot ETFs applications before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), awaiting approval. On April 30, Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas said that he gives the odds of Solana ETFs being approved at 90%, a nod to a new and far, far more crypto-friendly SEC.

That said, most of those eight have added staking to their ETF proposals, something that Bloomberg ETF Analyst James Seyffart said on June 13 could slow down a process that already has a lot of back and forth to go.

SOL is currently trading near $145, up a solid 11% on the day after a volatile weekend across crypto markets.

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