Pump.fun remained Solana’s largest revenue generator in the first quarter of 2026, raising $124.7 million, more than a third of the network’s $342.2 million in total app revenue, even as memecoin activity cooled.
Messari said in Solana’s Q1 report that Memecoin Launchpad’s revenue increased 17% sequentially, a sign of the continued resilience of the company’s core business.
Launchpads generated $144 million in the first quarter, representing about 42% of Solana’s total app revenue. A standout in this space was Bags, whose quarterly sales rose 1,347% to $11.5 million, boosted by a wave of AI-themed meme coins in January. This surge didn’t last long, and by February, monthly revenue was down 85%.
Solana’s income. Source: Messari
Solana’s memecoin revenue has been sustained even as major institutions such as BlackRock, Visa, and JP Morgan expand their presence across the payments and tokenization ecosystem, and the network attracts an increasingly wide range of users.
“Meme coins do not define Solana,” Solana Foundation President Lily Liu said in a recent interview.
Related: MoonPay acquires DFlow and adds Solana trading infrastructure
Trading app RWA grows with Solana
Trading apps on Solana were the fastest growing area for the entire quarter, with revenue increasing 40% to $79 million. Axiom led the pack with $42.4 million, making it the second highest-grossing app on the network.
Elsewhere, Solana’s real world asset market capitalization rose 43% to over $2 billion in the quarter, driven by BlackRock’s BUIDL doubling to $525 million as Anchorage Digital added custody support.
Total DeFi locks fell 22% to $6.16 billion, but Messari researchers attributed the decline primarily to SOL’s 33% price decline rather than user churn. The network’s share of the total DeFi TVL remained almost unchanged at 6.7%.
RWA is growing in Solana due to inflows from institutional investors. Source: Messari
On the infrastructure side, the focus is on Alpenglow, a comprehensive consensus upgrade targeting the Agave 4.1 release. If shipped as planned, this upgrade will reduce Solana’s transaction finality from approximately 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds.
Related: Solana Client Deploys Post-Quantum Solution Falcon
Goldman Sachs withdraws from position in Solana
As reported by Cointelegraph, Goldman Sachs exited its position in the Solana ETF in the first quarter of 2026, dropping stakes in the fund from Grayscale, Bitwise, and Fidelity.
Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest bank, also nearly eliminated its position in Solana in the first quarter of 2026, reducing its stake in Bitwise’s Solana ETF from 266,320 shares to just 2,817 shares, despite more than doubling its total cryptocurrency holdings to $235 million by adding to the ARK 21Shares and BlackRock Bitcoin ETFs.
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