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wrote a column · Jul 25 01:01

Bitwise Staking Report: Revenues Across Six Major Layer-1 Blockchains Generally Declined—What Supports Token Value?

Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026'
Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher
In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined.
The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose.
Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand.
Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. In staking, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYPE under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework.
In tokenized real-world assets, tokenized equity trading volume on Solana surged 2,479-fold year-over-year, rising from $1.34 million in June 2025 to $33.2 billion a year later, driven by the launch of SpaceX and Micron securities on Backpack Securities. S&P Dow Jones licensed the S&P 500 index to a product on Hyperliquid, and FIFA’s World Cup ticketing system runs on a dedicated Avalanche L1 chain.
In payments, Deel completed its first full quarter on Tempo, disbursing approximately $30 million to 7,200 contractors.
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Ethereum’s staking yield consists of two components. Consensus rewards are newly issued ETH distributed by the protocol to validators and stakers—pure issuance that gradually increases the total supply. Execution rewards come from user-paid priority fees and MEV, reflecting genuine demand for block space.
The yield structure remains dominated by issuance. Of the total 2.84% annualized yield in Q2 2026, 2.65 percentage points came from consensus rewards and 0.19 percentage points from execution rewards—a ratio of roughly 93% to 7%.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Chart note: Annualized staking yield: 25Q1 3.35%, 25Q2 3.18%, 25Q3 2.94%, 25Q4 2.94%, 26Q1 2.91%, 26Q2 2.84%
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Ethereum's network revenue comes from four fee streams. Two of them are burned: the base fee (the EIP-1559 priced cost for block space, paid by every transaction) and the blob fee (paid by Layer 2s when posting transaction data back to the mainnet for data availability).
The other two go to validators and stakers: the priority fee (tips users add to accelerate their transactions) and MEV (the additional value validators capture from transaction ordering, net of the block builder’s cut).
In Q2 2026, the network collected approximately 31,166 ETH in total, of which 74% went to validators and stakers and 26% was burned. At the quarterly average price, this equates to roughly $64 million—down 51% year-over-year from $131 million in Q2 2025. Following the Pectra and Fusaka upgrades, which significantly expanded blob space capacity, blob fees have approached zero.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Caption: Quarterly network revenue denominated in ETH: Q1 2025 – 97,998 ETH; Q2 2025 – 59,593 ETH; Q3 2025 – 37,755 ETH; Q4 2025 – 30,995 ETH; Q1 2026 – 27,670 ETH; Q2 2026 – 31,166 ETH
In ETH terms, revenue rose from 27,670 ETH in Q1 2026 to 31,166 ETH in Q2 2026—the first quarter-over-quarter increase in over a year. The decline in dollar terms was solely due to ETH’s lower price during the quarter.
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Active staking steadily increased from 34.2 million ETH at the end of Q1 2025 to a record high of 40.2 million ETH by the end of Q2 2026, representing 33% of total supply.
Inflows were concentrated in the first half of 2026. Q1 saw an addition of 2.81 million ETH—the largest single-quarter increase in this period—followed by another 1.73 million ETH in Q2. As more ETH is staked, the consensus-layer yield declines more slowly and settles at a lower level.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Caption: Total staked ETH and share of supply: Q1 2025 – 34.2M ETH (28.4%); Q2 2025 – 35.4M ETH (29.3%); Q3 2025 – 35.7M ETH (29.5%); Q4 2025 – 35.8M ETH (29.4%); Q1 2026 – 38.5M ETH (31.7%); Q2 2026 – 40.2M ETH (33.0%)
These inflows are from institutional sources. Bitmine Immersion held 5.62 million ETH as of June 14, 2026, of which 4.72 million were staked. Blackrock's iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ticker: ETHB) listed on Nasdaq on March 12, 2026, stakes 70% to 95% of its holdings and distributes rewards to investors monthly.
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Mainnet throughput nearly doubled within a year, rising from 15 to 26 transactions per second (TPS), as the block gas limit increased from 30 million to 60 million. This increase was implemented in phases by validators in 2025: raised to 36 million in February, 45 million in July, and finally to 60 million by the end of November.
The gas limit represents the computational budget available per block. Raising it allows more transactions to fit into each block, increasing throughput without causing greater congestion.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Chart caption: Average Mainnet TPS: 14 in Q1 2025, 15 in Q2 2025, 19 in Q3 2025, 18 in Q4 2025, and 26 in both Q1 and Q2 2026
Block fill rates have consistently hovered around 50%, by design. EIP-1559 sets the target utilization at 50% and automatically adjusts the base fee to maintain this level. If a block exceeds 50% full, the base fee for the next block increases by up to 12.5%; if it remains overfilled, the fee continues rising until usage declines. The opposite mechanism applies when blocks are underutilized.
The target is set at half-full rather than fully utilized to provide buffer capacity during demand spikes. During surges in activity, blocks can expand up to the gas limit, while rising fees gradually push out lower-priority transactions.
Ranking contracts by gas consumed in Q2 2026, the single largest consumer was Tether (USDT), accounting for 6.27% of all mainnet gas usage. The top ten contracts combined consumed nearly a quarter of total gas. The heaviest single use case was ordinary stablecoin transfers, with USDT and USDC together consuming approximately 9% of gas.
Two notable findings emerge. The second-largest consumer, at 3.39%, is a contract flagged by Etherscan as 'address poisoning'—it sends tiny fake transfers to numerous wallets, waiting for users to mistakenly copy scammer addresses. Aztec’s privacy-focused rollup consumed 1.75% of gas for verifying zero-knowledge proofs on L1, while the ERC-4337 EntryPoint accounted for 1.54%. Named MEV bots are present but individually consume less than 1.5% each.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
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Two upgrades have shaped the current state. Pectra (May 2025) introduced smart account functionality (EIP-7702) to regular wallets and increased the maximum validator balance from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH (EIP-7251), allowing operators to consolidate stakes and run the same capacity with fewer validators.
Fusaka (December 2025) introduced PeerDAS, enabling nodes to sample blob data from rollups instead of downloading and storing all of it. Blob capacity has thus expanded, and the expected cost for L2s to post data to Ethereum is projected to decline.
Next are two hard forks. Glamsterdam, targeted for the second half of 2026 (exact date TBD), focuses on two main changes: integrating block building into the protocol itself via ePBS, eliminating the trusted relay dependency that has existed since the Merge; and introducing block-level access lists, which inform the network in advance about which state elements a transaction will touch, thereby enabling parallel execution. This upgrade is also expected to further raise the gas limit, with long-term discussions targeting 200 million.
The second hard fork is Hegota, scheduled for late 2026, which introduces FOCIL (EIP-7805), a consensus-layer change aimed at enhancing censorship resistance. In each slot, a committee of 16 validators independently lists valid transactions they observe in the mempool, and block builders must include these transactions. Attesters only vote for a block if the builder complies. This design disperses transaction inclusion authority across many participants, making it structurally difficult for any single party to exclude a specific transaction.
Finally, there’s block time. Under normal conditions, a block is produced every 12 seconds, with finality taking 12 to 15 minutes. EIP-7782 proposes halving block time to 6 seconds by compressing the three sub-tasks within each slot: block proposal from 4 seconds to 3 seconds, attestation from 4 seconds to 1.5 seconds, and aggregation from 4 seconds to 1.5 seconds. This proposal is not currently attached to any scheduled fork; it was considered for Glamsterdam but not included.
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Solana’s staking yield remains among the highest of major public blockchains. Validator revenue comes from three sources: protocol inflation, block rewards, and MEV tips. All three declined in the first half of 2026—inflation decreased according to Solana’s emission schedule, while block rewards and tip income weakened due to lower network activity.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Chart note: Network blended annualized yield: Q1 2025 11.50%, Q2 2025 9.11%, Q3 2025 8.17%, Q4 2025 6.94%, Q1 2026 6.89%, Q2 2026 6.25%
Inflationary rewards declined from 6.1% to 5.8% in the first half of the year and remain the primary source of yield, accounting for over 90% of annualized staking returns. Block rewards and Jito tips together contributed 0.44% in Q2 2026, down from 0.79% in the previous quarter.
A clear shift from 2025 into 2026 is the reversal in the internal structure of non-inflationary rewards. During the transaction boom in Q1 2025, Jito MEV tips accounted for roughly 70% of non-inflationary income. By the first half of 2026, block rewards had become the dominant component, representing approximately 75%.
Two factors contributed to this trend. First, reduced trading activity led to fewer arbitrage opportunities, which in turn decreased demand for transaction ordering via Jito bundles. Second, the growing adoption of new block-building clients like Jito’s BAM and Harmonic has diverted revenue away from the traditional Jito ecosystem—Harmonic uses its own priority-fee-based bundling mechanism, carving out a share of income that previously flowed through Jito.
These trends accelerated following the market crash in October 2025 and were further amplified by competition from new trading platforms such as Hyperliquid.
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Solana’s Realized Economic Value (REV)—the total amount users paid to use the chain—continued to decline during this period, falling from a peak of $812 million in Q1 2025 to $89 million a year later, and further dropping to $51 million in Q2 2026.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Chart caption: REV in USD terms: $812M in Q1 2025, $272M in Q2 2025, $223M in Q3 2025, $90M in Q4 2025, $89M in Q1 2026, $51M in Q2 2026
When denominated in SOL, the decline appears less severe than shown in USD terms. REV generated approximately 3.9 million SOL in Q1 2025, 877,000 SOL in Q1 2026, and 631,000 SOL in Q2 2026. Although this still represents a significant drop from the early-2025 activity peak, the contraction is considerably milder in SOL terms due to a 62% decline in SOL’s price over the same period. Positive momentum emerged in Q1 2026, indicating that demand had begun recovering from the lows seen at the end of 2025, though it had not yet fully rebounded.
Activity itself remained resilient. Q1 2026 processed 10.1 billion non-voting transactions, an 18% year-over-year increase, while Q2 2026 saw 9.8 billion transactions, flat compared to the same period a year earlier.
This raises a key question: if transaction volume remains strong, why has REV declined?
Transactions on Solana consume computational resources measured in Compute Units (CUs). Each block has a fixed CU capacity, which was increased from 48 million to 60 million CUs in two upgrades during April and July 2025, with a planned increase to 100 million CUs expected in 2026.
Average CU utilization per non-voting transaction dropped from 55.5% in Q1 2026 to 47.5% in Q2 2026. With reduced competition, demand for priority fees and Jito tips also declined, causing average per-block rewards to fall 31% quarter-over-quarter—from 0.041 SOL in Q1 2026 to 0.0287 SOL in Q2 2026.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
The conclusion is straightforward: Solana's revenue decline stems from reduced network congestion. Block space is no longer scarce, giving users little incentive to bid aggressively for inclusion, which in turn has driven down REV.
Regarding slot duration, Solana targets approximately 400 milliseconds, though actual durations fluctuate based on validator behavior. Different schedulers make different trade-offs—some slightly extend slot length to capture more transactions and increase block revenue. Slot times peaked in January 2025 and have trended downward since, reaching around 385 milliseconds in Q4 2025 before rebounding close to 400 milliseconds by Q2 2026. A plausible explanation is that validators have economic incentives to lengthen slots to construct higher-value blocks, at the cost of slowing down the network.
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Solana has one of the highest staking ratios among public blockchains, with approximately 427 million SOL staked—representing 68% of its total supply of 628 million. This ratio has remained unusually stable over the past two years, supported by relatively high staking yields.
Of the staked SOL, roughly 57 million (13.3%) is delegated via liquid staking tokens (LSTs), 20 million (4.7%) through the Solana Foundation Delegation Program (SFDP), and the remaining 350 million is directly staked by market participants. The SFDP was originally designed to distribute stake to smaller validators to support decentralization, but the Foundation has increasingly focused on supporting only those validators actively contributing to the ecosystem. As a result, the program’s share of total staking has declined from around 10% to under 5% within a year.
Total liquid staking rose from 40 million SOL in January 2025 to a peak of 66 million a year later, before declining to 56.5 million by June 2026.
JitoSOL experienced the steepest decline, falling from a peak of 18.5 million in June 2025 to 9.94 million a year later. Marinade followed a similar trajectory, dropping from 5.5 million to 2.4 million. Binance emerged as a clear winner, growing from 6.5 million at the start of 2025 to 10.1 million. DoubleZero briefly reached 13 million between November 2025 and February 2026, but has since retreated to 5.2 million.
The key takeaway is that growth in liquid staking is no longer driven by legacy players—JitoSOL and Marinade have lost market share, while BNSOL, dzSOL, dSOL, and a cohort of smaller LSTs have captured most of the incremental volume.
The number of active validators dropped from approximately 1,250 in June 2025 to around 830 a year later—a 34% reduction over 12 months. This is largely due to the cost of voting alone, which consumes roughly 1 SOL per day, amounting to an annualized expense of about $25,000 at recent prices, not including hardware and infrastructure costs. Validators with insufficient delegation are finding it increasingly difficult to remain profitable, and with the gradual contraction of SFDP delegations, smaller operators are exiting at an accelerating pace.
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Solana's application layer generated USD 227 million in revenue in Q2 2026, down 31% from USD 328 million in Q1 2026. This decline was largely attributable to the price of SOL, which fell by a similar magnitude over the same period.
Trading remains Solana's dominant use case, with seven of the top ten revenue-generating applications related to trading. Pump continues to lead by a wide margin, generating USD 90.1 million in Q2 2026—roughly three times that of the second-ranked Collector Crypt (USD 32.2 million)—with the two together accounting for more than half of the total revenue from the top ten apps.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Collector Crypt is a collectibles platform focused on tokenized real-world assets, specializing in items like Pokémon cards. It gained significant traction after introducing a gacha mechanic—random card packs containing tokenized collectibles that users can hold, trade, or redeem for physical delivery. It was the fastest-growing app among the top ten.
Pacifica is a newer entrant, generating USD 20 million in revenue in Q2 2026, slightly above its USD 18.9 million in Q1 2026. It operates as a hybrid perpetual exchange, running its matching engine off-chain for low-latency execution while handling custody and settlement on-chain.
The ranking omits a growing category of proprietary automated market makers (propAMMs). Unlike traditional AMMs, propAMMs typically do not charge explicit fees; instead, they profit from bid-ask spreads like traditional market makers in finance, making their earnings difficult to measure. Given their increasing importance in liquid markets, the true revenue of Solana’s trading ecosystem is likely higher than what the ranking suggests.
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On June 12, the largest IPO in stock market history took place. SpaceX went public at a valuation of USD 1.77 trillion, drawing intense interest from both institutional and retail investors, and the Solana ecosystem was well prepared for it.
In 2025, trading volume of tokenized assets was primarily driven by credit-related instruments. In 2026, equity-related tokenized assets grew from USD 226 million in January to USD 871 million in May, then surged to USD 3.3 billion in June due to SpaceX’s IPO.
On Solana, tokenized shares of SpaceX ($SPCX) are available through three venues: Backpack, xStocks, and PreStocks. Since the IPO, these platforms have collectively facilitated USD 600 million in trading volume, with 85% coming from Backpack.
Micron Technology ($MU), a memory chip manufacturer, began trading on Solana in early May but only saw meaningful volume after listing on Backpack Securities on June 22. By the end of June, the stock had recorded a total quarterly trading volume of USD 107.9 million, of which USD 106.7 million occurred on Backpack.
Backpack holds an advantage in tokenized equities, likely because it allows users to redeem tokenized stocks on Solana for the underlying assets through its regulated brokerage, Backpack Securities.
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The race for block building began in the second half of 2025, with Jito’s BAM launching in September and Harmonic following in November, each reflecting different visions for Solana’s future.
Traditionally, validators were responsible both for proposing blocks and for deciding which transactions to include and how to order them. As the value of MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) rose, this raised concerns about centralization and market fairness. The new block-building systems separate transaction ordering from block proposal. BAM emphasizes transaction privacy and predictable execution, while Harmonic focuses on fostering competition among builders.
Both systems saw rapid adoption shortly after launch. Validators running BAM accounted for approximately 140.8 million staked SOL (33.0% of total stake), while Harmonic validators represented 99.4 million SOL (23.3%), together totaling roughly 56%. This means that the majority of Solana blocks are now produced by these two systems. As of end-June 2026, both ecosystems remained closed, with block-building infrastructure operated privately by their respective teams.
BAM’s architecture is built around Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). TEEs allow participants to verify that a node is indeed running approved code without modifications that could compromise transaction privacy or alter execution outcomes, thereby providing market participants submitting order flow with a more trustworthy environment.
Beyond privacy, BAM also introduces a standardized building environment. Today, Solana market makers face a fragmented ecosystem, with validators running different client implementations—such as Agave, Frankendancer, BAM, and Harmonic—and often even different scheduler implementations within the same client. Since schedulers determine how transactions are ordered within blocks, execution behavior varies across validators, forcing market makers to tailor strategies for each environment. BAM addresses this by deploying a single scheduler across all BAM nodes.
BAM also connects many of the network’s fastest validators. In the median slot time distribution across epochs 971 to 980, BAM validators clustered tightly in the lower latency range, while non-BAM validators exhibited a long tail of slower performance. BAM validators dominated the 350–360 millisecond range and were nearly absent from the slowest segment.
Harmonic’s design aligns more closely with Ethereum’s model, where independent builders compete to construct the most valuable blocks. To support this, it offers several strategies tailored to different objectives: First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) for low-latency execution, MREV for maximizing validator revenue, 50-millisecond Frequent Batch Auctions (FBA) that group transactions into short auction windows before ordering, and customizable configurations allowing users to define batch timing, sorting rules, and bundle handling.
Harmonic also prioritizes reducing toxic MEV, with its validators consistently maintaining among the lowest sandwich attack rates network-wide.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Caption: As of June 15, 2026, the network-wide 30-day sandwich attack rate was 0.79% and the 60-day rate was 0.81%; Harmonic validators, representing 99.4 million staked SOL, recorded rates of 0.69% (30-day) and 0.67% (60-day).
Traditional finance relies on regulation and market surveillance to curb predatory trading, whereas public blockchains must address the same issues through protocol design and infrastructure.
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The most aggressive protocol upgrade currently in development is Alpenglow—a new consensus protocol designed to replace Tower BFT. Scheduled for deployment in Q3 2026, it represents the most significant overhaul of Solana’s core architecture since mainnet launch.
The primary benefit is faster finality. While Solana already boasts one of the industry’s fastest block times, transactions still take several seconds to achieve finality. Alpenglow aims to reduce this to a few hundred milliseconds.
To achieve this, Alpenglow introduces a two-round voting-based consensus mechanism, replaces Proof of History (PoH) with validators’ local clocks, and shifts from the current gossip-based message propagation to direct communication among validators. These changes significantly simplify the consensus layer and reduce communication overhead.
Alpenglow also eliminates on-chain voting. With consensus messages moved off-chain, vote transactions disappear—lowering validator operating costs and freeing up block space for non-voting activities.
Reducing finality time would feel incomplete without a corresponding reduction in slot duration. To that end, SIMD-0525—which targets halving the slot time from approximately 400 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds—is expected to deploy before Alpenglow goes live.
Halving the slot time doubles block production frequency and reduces latency, while also shortening the leader window from 1.6 seconds to 800 milliseconds—giving validators less time to delay block production in search of more profitable transactions. This means faster execution and more predictable settlement for traders and market makers, but increased operational pressure for validators. Before Alpenglow fully rolls out, vote transactions under the current consensus model will roughly double, driving up costs accordingly.
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SOL inflation has long been a contentious topic within the community. At launch in 2020, Solana adopted an 8% inflation rate to incentivize validator participation and ecosystem growth. Under the current schedule, this rate decreases by 15% annually, reaching a terminal rate of 1.5% by 2031.
As the network matures, an increasing number of participants believe inflation has fulfilled its historical role. Proponents of reducing inflation argue that the current 3.8% rate makes staking relatively more attractive, thereby suppressing DeFi participation. Meanwhile, stakers sell their rewards to cover taxes and operational expenses, creating persistent selling pressure.
For reference: when SOL first reached $250 in Q4 2021, its market capitalization was approximately $75 billion. By Q3 2025, when it returned to the same price level, its market cap had grown by 80% to $135 billion.
The first large-scale attempt was Multicoin’s SIMD-0228 proposal in early 2025, which sought to replace the fixed emission reduction schedule with a market-based mechanism tied to staking participation rates. The proposal sparked one of Solana’s largest governance debates to date but ultimately failed to secure the required absolute majority.
Subsequent discussions shifted toward more targeted solutions. Helius’s SIMD-0550 proposal increased the emission reduction rate from 15% to 30%, leaving the issuance model unchanged, but would cause the network to reach its terminal inflation rate of 1.5% in 2028 instead of 2031, resulting in nearly 19 million fewer SOL issued cumulatively.
Temporal’s SIMD-0547 approached the issue from another angle: rather than reducing issuance, it proposed increasing token burns. Currently, users can reserve substantial computing resources while paying almost nothing for the portion they don’t actually consume. Under this proposal, transactions would pay a small fee based on the resources they request—regardless of actual usage—and all such revenue would be burned.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Caption: Estimated daily burn under SIMD-0547: 0.1 lamport ≈ 2,851 SOL (4.3% of daily issuance), 0.25 lamport ≈ 7,128 SOL (10.7%), 1.0 lamport ≈ 28,512 SOL (42.9%)
At the proposed initial parameter of 0.25 lamports per compute unit, this mechanism would burn approximately 7,128 SOL per day—equivalent to about 11% of current daily issuance. While insufficient to fully offset inflation, it would materially increase SOL’s burn rate.
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In Q2 2026, Hyperliquid generated revenue from seven distinct streams, all of which ultimately remove HYPE from circulation—either through buybacks funded by the aid fund or direct burns. The aid fund is a system address built into the protocol with no private key or owner; fees are automatically converted into HYPE and sent there, where they are permanently locked. Following a governance vote in December 2025, all HYPE held in the fund was formally recognized as burned and removed from circulating supply.
The seven revenue streams are:
Perpetual trading fees from natively listed markets. Each perpetual trade is charged in the quote asset (e.g., USDC, USDT, USDe), representing the largest revenue stream. These fees flow into the assistance fund to buy back and burn HYPE.
HIP-3 perpetual fees (net). Any team that stakes 500,000 HYPE can deploy a perpetual market on any underlying asset—ranging from crypto assets to real-world commodities, stocks, or indices. Trading fees from HIP-3 markets are split between Hyperliquid and the deploying party. By default, the fee rate is set at twice the standard rate, with a 50/50 split; the deploying party may take less but never more than half. This revenue line is currently significantly suppressed because most HIP-3 markets operate in 'growth mode,' a per-market setting that reduces total fees (including both parties’ shares) by approximately 90% to help attract liquidity to new markets.
Spot trading fees. The portion collected in USDC goes to the assistance fund for buybacks, while the portion collected in HYPE is burned directly.
HyperEVM gas fees. Gas paid by users for transactions on HyperEVM—comprising both base fees and priority tips—is entirely burned.
Token listing and deployment auctions. To list a new spot token or deploy a new HIP-3 market, teams must win a Dutch auction. The winning bid is paid in HYPE and subsequently burned.
Order priority fees. Traders can pay to have their orders prioritized in execution order. Paid in HYPE, these fees are burned directly. This revenue stream remains zero until 2026.
Gossip priority fees. Participants bid in a cyclic auction to receive market data faster than standard data feeds. Fees are paid in HYPE and burned. This stream also remains zero until 2026.
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Fees directed toward buybacks rose from USD 22 million in Q1 2025 to a peak of USD 332 million in Q3 2025, before declining to USD 186 million in Q1 2026 and USD 175 million in Q2 2026. Perpetual fees from natively listed markets accounted for 83% of total revenue in Q2 2026, with the remaining 17% distributed across HIP-3 perpetuals, spot trading, HyperEVM gas, priority fees, and auctions.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
More notably, revenue diversification has emerged. HIP-3 launched on October 13, 2025; its fees were negligible in the first quarter but grew into a meaningful secondary revenue stream by 2026, generating USD 18 million in Q1 2026 and USD 14 million in Q2 2026—roughly 8% of total revenue. As core crypto perpetual fees declined, growth in non-crypto markets—including commodities, equities, and indices—partially offset the drop.
Two additional revenue streams have not yet been reflected in the 26Q2 figures. The HIP-4 marketplace is live and growing, with trading volume rising from $149 million in May 2026 to $287 million in June, though transaction fees remain disabled during the testing phase. AQAv2 is a framework under which participating stablecoin issuers allocate approximately 90% of their reserve earnings to the protocol, paid into a support fund used to repurchase HYPE. This framework has been approved by validator governance and applies to USDC issued by Coinbase and Circle, but as of 26Q2, the first payment had not yet commenced.
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438 million HYPE tokens are currently staked, representing 43.8% of the total supply. Staking occurs through delegation, where holders assign their HYPE to validators who use it to participate in HyperBFT consensus and earn staking rewards. Rewards are automatically compounded daily into the staked balance, currently yielding an annualized rate of 2.2%. These rewards are not sourced from trading fees or protocol revenue but are instead funded through newly minted HYPE from a dedicated emissions reserve.
The validator set remains concentrated but is becoming more decentralized. Initially limited to five foundation-run validators, the set gradually expanded to 16, then 21, then 24, and reached 27 by the end of 26Q2. The five validators operated by the Hyper Foundation currently hold approximately 49% of all staked HYPE, down from over 60% in 25Q2.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Caption: Net delegation inflows: +2.87 million in 25Q2, +720,000 in 25Q3, +4.26 million in 25Q4, +590,000 in 26Q1, +590,000 in 26Q2
This quarter’s inflows were primarily driven by institutional participants. As a condition of the AQAv2 framework, both Coinbase and Circle staked 500,000 HYPE each. Hyperliquid Strategies, a corporate treasury converting its balance sheet into HYPE, is one of the largest holders outside the foundation. Bitwise launched BHYP on the NYSE on May 15, 2026, and stakes via its infrastructure arm, Bitwise Onchain Solutions; 21Shares launched THYP on Nasdaq on May 12, and Grayscale launched HYPG on June 3—both of which also stake on-chain.
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Hyperliquid features two execution environments—HyperCore and HyperEVM—running on the same chain and sharing the same validator set. They maintain a unified state, enabling applications on HyperEVM to directly read prices and place orders on HyperCore without requiring a cross-chain bridge.
Two mechanisms enable this integration. A read precompile allows HyperEVM contracts to access real-time HyperCore data, including oracle prices, positions, and balances. The CoreWriter system contract enables HyperEVM contracts to send actions back to HyperCore, including placing and canceling orders, transfers, and staking operations.
HyperCore is a native order book exchange with block times under 100 milliseconds, averaging throughput of approximately 24,000 transactions per second and a theoretical maximum of 200,000 transactions per second. The platform records billions of trades and operations daily.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Caption: HyperCore Average TPS: 5,941 in 25Q2, 18,161 in 25Q3, 25,735 in 25Q4, 22,707 in 26Q1, and 23,724 in 26Q2
HyperEVM is a general-purpose, permissionless smart contract environment secured by the same consensus mechanism as HyperCore. This chain processes approximately 4 transactions per second, with a block fill rate of around 20%. By number of unique users, the most common use case is stablecoin transfers—primarily native Circle USDC—followed by a handful of decentralized exchanges and aggregators.
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Hyperliquid’s perpetual volume reached $652 billion in 26Q2, roughly flat compared to $633 billion in 26Q1, remaining among the highest in on-chain venues. More interestingly, the composition has shifted. By 25Q4—the first full quarter after HIP-3 went live—non-crypto markets already accounted for 2% of total volume. By 26Q2, that segment had grown to $212 billion, representing 32% of total volume.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Trade.xyz is the dominant team in HIP-3 markets, accounting for 95.1% of HIP-3 volume ($202.6 billion) in 26Q2. It was the first deployer under HIP-3, building products centered around non-crypto perpetuals—starting with U.S. equities and expanding into commodities and indices. On March 18, 2026, S&P Dow Jones Indices granted Trade.xyz an official license for the S&P 500, making it the first and only officially licensed perpetual derivative based on this index on any decentralized platform. Eligible non-U.S. investors can now gain leveraged exposure to the S&P 500, tradable 24/7, with index data supplied directly by S&P Dow Jones. This marks a substantive departure from prior DeFi synthetic equity products that relied on unofficial price feeds.
Open interest also warrants attention. Open interest only grows when capital enters the market and stays, making it a better indicator of genuine market activity than trading volume. Average open interest in 26Q2 was $8.7 billion, up 32% from $6.6 billion in 26Q1, indicating traders held positions longer during the second quarter.
Three deployers exited during the quarter. Felix was the first to announce its departure on June 8, followed by Ventuals—which offered perpetual contracts on private companies like OpenAI and Anthropic—announcing market closure on June 15. A few days later, Dreamcash, backed by Tether and operating USDT-collateralized perpetuals, shut down, citing diminished competitiveness after Hyperliquid natively integrated USDC.
On the front end, builder codes indicate which applications are routing order flow to the exchange. These fees are layered on top of Hyperliquid’s own trading fees and accrue to the application—not the protocol.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Caption: 26Q2 builder code fees: Phantom $4.13 million, MetaMask $2.25 million, Based $760,000, Rabby $690,000, Tread.fi $610,000
General-purpose wallets outpacing specialized trading terminals suggests Hyperliquid’s user base is expanding beyond its initial core audience.
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Hyperliquid's value capture primarily relies on trading fees, which fluctuate with trading volume—a metric that is inherently cyclical. Two developments are currently reshaping the composition of this revenue stream.
The first is the expansion of tradable assets. Within three quarters of HIP-3 going live, non-crypto markets accounted for 32% of total trading volume. HIP-4 further extends this model into outcome and prediction markets. As of Q2 2026, cumulative notional trading volume reached approximately $436 million, with roughly $149 million generated in the first 30 days alone. However, trading fees remain disabled during the testing phase and thus do not yet contribute to protocol revenue.
The second is AQAv2, a new revenue stream distinct from trading fees. It channels approximately 90% of the yield generated by USDC reserves on Hyperliquid into a relief fund, with the first disbursement scheduled for October 3, 2026. The platform holds roughly $5–6 billion in USDC, with Coinbase serving as the capital deployment agent. This is expected to generate annual contributions of $135–160 million. While this figure depends on short-term interest rates and whether USDC remains on the platform, it is not subject to crypto market cycles.
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By the end of Q2 2026, 196 million AVAX were staked across 591 validators on Avalanche, representing a staking rate of 41.5%. Staking rewards on this chain are funded entirely through token issuance and are unrelated to trading fees. The protocol issues new AVAX on a fixed schedule, with a permanent cap of 720 million tokens, while all trading fees are burned, partially offsetting the inflationary impact of issuance.
The reward rate depends on two variables: the gap between the current supply and the 720 million cap, and the staking duration. Longer lock-up periods yield higher rates, with the maximum burn rate of 12% corresponding to a one-year commitment.
Reward Rate = (720 million − Current Supply) ÷ Current Supply × Burn Rate
With a circulating supply of approximately 472 million tokens in June 2026, the calculation yields: (720 million − 472 million) ÷ 472 million × 12% ≈ 6.3%.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Chart note: Annualized yield for one-year maximum staking: Q1 2025 7.0%, Q2 2025 6.8%, Q3 2025 6.7%, Q4 2025 6.5%, Q1 2026 6.4%, Q2 2026 6.3%
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Avalanche's network revenue encompasses all transaction fees from the C-Chain, P-Chain, and X-Chain, which are burned. The C-Chain accounts for approximately 97% of this total.
In addition to C-Chain fees, there is a second revenue stream: L1 validator fees. Since Avalanche9000 removed the requirement to lock 2,000 AVAX to launch a sovereign L1, each L1 validator now pays approximately 1.33 AVAX per month continuously to the P-Chain, and these payments are burned. This stream is currently small—only a few thousand AVAX per quarter compared to tens of thousands from the C-Chain—but it grows incrementally with each new L1 launched. The X-Chain’s contribution is negligible.
Transaction costs have dropped significantly over the past year due to three upgrades. The most aggressive was Etna in December 2024, which reduced the C-Chain’s minimum base fee by 96%, from 25 nAVAX per unit of gas to 1 nAVAX. The April 2025 Octane upgrade improved how fees respond to demand; previously, surges in activity would rapidly inflate fees that then declined slowly, but Octane smoothed this adjustment process, aligning fees more closely with actual usage levels and reducing average transaction fees by an additional 43%. The November 2025 Granite upgrade enabled block production speed to vary with demand—faster during peak times and slower during lulls—without compromising sub-second finality.
Each upgrade lowered per-transaction costs, which in turn spurred increased activity. C-Chain transactions rose from 58 million in Q2 2025 to 236 million in Q2 2026—a roughly fourfold increase over one year.
Network revenue denominated in AVAX rose from 58,000 AVAX in Q1 2025 to a peak of 134,000 AVAX in Q4 2025, before declining by approximately 70% in 2026 due to softer demand and smoother fee mechanisms that further reduced per-transaction fees. The decline was even steeper in USD terms, as the price of AVAX fell from around $26 in Q3 2025 to about $8 in Q2 2026.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Overall, the decline in network revenue is not due to fewer users, but primarily because the cost per unit of block space has become cheaper.
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There are currently 33 sovereign L1 networks operating on the Avalanche mainnet. L1s on Avalanche are application-specific chains with their own validator sets, offering several advantages: validator sets can be either permissionless or permissioned; transaction fees can be paid in the project’s native token rather than AVAX; validators can be required to undergo identity verification, operate within specific jurisdictions, or hold regulatory licenses; and each network enjoys dedicated block space without competing for throughput with other chains, while maintaining connectivity through cross-chain messaging.
AvaCloud is Ava Labs’ managed deployment platform, enabling teams to avoid building and maintaining their own validator infrastructure, RPC nodes, indexers, and block explorers. Instead, they can configure everything via a web-based console.
FIFA has built a dedicated Avalanche L1 blockchain with Modex for the 2026 World Cup, bringing the secondary ticketing market into its own ecosystem and eliminating the need for third-party resale platforms like StubHub.
Fans first receive a 'purchase right' token, which grants them priority access to buy tickets for specific matches before the general public sale. This token can be traded on FIFA’s own marketplace, with both buyers and sellers paying fees to FIFA. When ready to purchase a ticket, fans exchange their purchase right for a 'ticket claim' and complete the transaction through FIFA’s standard ticketing system. Each token is verifiable and traceable on-chain, eliminating fraud at the source. Users operate on FIFA’s standard platform without needing to know they are interacting with blockchain technology.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Over 100,000 purchase right tokens have been issued, with cumulative trading volume exceeding $25 million. In the days leading up to the tournament, ticketing activity generated more than 60,000 transactions on Avalanche, peaking at 24,110 transactions in a single day—several times the usual daily volume.
Another example is Progmat, Japan’s largest tokenized securities platform, initiated by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and co-owned by major Japanese banks, exchanges, and technology firms. It accounts for 63% of Japan’s cumulative security token issuance volume, covering real estate, corporate bonds, and other institutional assets. The platform offers operational benefits: settlement occurs instantly rather than taking several days, assets can be traded 24/7, ownership is automatically verified, and manual reconciliation between intermediaries is no longer required.
Progmat previously operated on Corda, a private ledger used by financial institutions but closed to external parties. In February 2026, it announced its migration to a dedicated Avalanche L1 chain, making its tokens EVM-compatible and enabling interoperability with the broader public blockchain ecosystem, while also gaining a compliant, permissioned environment with its own validator set—a necessity for regulated securities issuance. The migration involves over $2 billion in tokenized assets and is currently ongoing.
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Four developments define Avalanche’s near-term direction: one is already in effect, two are in the proposal process, and one is under development with no confirmed timeline.
ACP-267, concerning validator uptime, took effect on April 1, 2026, raising the minimum uptime requirement for all staking periods starting on or after that date from 80% to 90%. Validators falling below this threshold receive no rewards for that period. This change is being phased in gradually as existing staking periods expire and validators redelegate.
ACP-236, concerning continuous staking, has not yet launched. Currently, stakers must specify an end date when delegating and manually initiate a new staking transaction to redelegate upon expiration. This proposal removes that requirement, enabling automatic renewal at the end of each staking period.
ACP-194, concerning streaming asynchronous execution, has not yet launched. Currently, a block must be fully executed before it is accepted by consensus. This proposal decouples consensus from execution, allowing them to run in parallel: the network accepts a block as soon as consensus validates it, while execution completes separately. The result is higher throughput and lower latency under heavy load, without changing how validators or users interact with the network.
FIREWOOD is a new state database developed by Ava Labs in Rust, offering more efficient access to blockchain state than existing solutions. Its mainnet launch date is yet to be determined, and it primarily targets high-throughput Layer 1 blockchains where state access has become a bottleneck.
Following fee reductions over the past year, the net AVAX burn on the C-Chain relative to issuance has become minimal. Going forward, the key driver will be the expansion in the number of Layer 1 chains. Each sovereign L1 pays and burns approximately 1.33 AVAX per validator per month to the P-Chain, so the more networks there are, the larger this fee stream becomes. The current effective yield is around 5.7% and will gradually decline as circulating supply approaches the 720 million cap. The optimistic scenario hinges on whether L1 fee revenue can grow large enough to materially offset this decline.
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NEAR’s staking rewards are funded through protocol inflation. In Q4 2025, NEAR reduced its target inflation rate from 5% to 2.5%. Of this, 10% is allocated to the protocol treasury operated by the NEAR Foundation, with the remaining 90% distributed to validators and delegators. This 2.5% rate will remain unchanged unless modified again via a protocol upgrade.
Total supply is approximately 1.3 billion tokens, of which about 588 million are staked, resulting in a staking ratio of roughly 45%. Since rewards are distributed only to staked NEAR, the current blended annualized staking yield is approximately 4.9%.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Chart note: Blended annualized staking yield: 9.72% in Q1 2025, 9.83% in Q2 2025, 9.81% in Q3 2025, 6.34% in Q4 2025, and 4.88% in both Q1 and Q2 2026.
The reduction in inflation has not led to a decline in staking participation. The staking ratio has remained stable at around 45% since the change, indicating that lower nominal yields have not altered staking behavior.
A critical point for validators and delegators is that NEAR’s staking rewards are not driven by transaction fees. Users pay transaction fees in NEAR, determined by gas consumed and the network’s gas price. When smart contracts execute, approximately 30% of the execution fee is returned to the contract account as developer incentives, while the remaining 70% is burned. Thus, increased activity boosts burn volume and contract revenue but does not directly increase rewards for validators or delegators.
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Total gas consumption declined from 419,000 in Q1 2025 to 308,000 in Q4 2025, with the pace of decline accelerating in 2026—reaching 246,000 in Q1 2026 and an estimated 82,000 in Q2 2026, representing an 81% drop compared to Q1 2025.
The primary driver behind the sharp Q2 decline was the collapse of Kai-Ching activity. Kai-Ching served as the rewards and payments layer behind KaiKai, a Singapore-based shopping and loyalty app developed by Cosmose AI. Until March 2026, Kai-Ching had been one of the largest sources of activity on NEAR, frequently accounting for roughly half of total gas consumption.
Publicly available information does not clearly disclose the specific commercial reasons behind the collapse of this activity. Public materials indicate that KaiKai and Kai-Ching were built around rewards, cashback, payments, and in-app user engagement, with transaction costs hidden from end users.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Caption: Total transactions vs. Kai-Ching transactions: Q1 2025 – 619 million (of which 233 million); Q1 2026 – 310.8 million (of which 202 million); Q2 2026 – 77.7 million (of which 1.4 million)
Transaction volumes followed a similar pattern. Total transactions fell from 619 million in Q1 2025 to 310.8 million in Q1 2026, and further declined to 77.7 million in Q2 2026—a 75% quarter-over-quarter drop. Kai-Ching transactions alone plummeted from approximately 202 million in Q1 2026 to just 1.4 million in Q2 2026, accounting for the vast majority of the overall decline.
Since NEAR’s fees are a function of gas consumption, on-chain revenue declined alongside activity. Aggregate fee revenue dropped from approximately $1.4 million in Q1 2025 to $306,000 in Q1 2026 and $137,000 in Q2 2026. The decline in gas usage remained the primary driver of lower fees in Q2, although NEAR’s token price rebounding from around $1 to approximately $2.8 partially offset the impact when measured in USD terms.
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Intents have become a key new growth driver for NEAR. It is an execution layer where users specify their desired outcome—for example, swapping or cross-chain transferring a specific asset—and specialized entities called solvers compete to execute the intent and provide the best price.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Trading volume grew rapidly after launch, rising from $332 million in August 2025 to a peak of $37 billion in November. Monthly volume then stabilized between $19 billion and $27 billion in the first half of 2026. Ethereum was the largest source of trading volume. By June 2026, volume rebounded to $24 billion, with a more diversified chain composition—Zcash, NEAR, TRON, Solana, and BSC all contributed meaningfully.
Fees generally track trading volume but not perfectly in sync. The most notable divergence occurred in December 2025, when volume dropped from $36.5 billion to $20.1 billion, yet fees remained elevated at $4.12 million. A smaller divergence emerged in June 2026, when volume rose to $23.5 billion while fees held steady at approximately $3.11 million—still below early-year levels. This discrepancy stems primarily from the interplay between routing strategies and fee mechanisms; different Intents routes trigger varying fee structures, so total fees do not scale linearly with volume.
In February 2026, NEAR introduced a buyback mechanism for Intents, using protocol-retained Intent revenue—after deducting partner and integrator shares—to purchase NEAR tokens. From the mechanism’s launch through June 2026, Intents generated approximately USD 2.26 million in buyback funds.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Caption: Distribution of assets traded via Intents: USDT USD 10.7 billion (45.5%), USDC USD 5.16 billion (21.9%), BTC USD 2.48 billion (10.5%), ETH USD 1.54 billion (6.5%), ZEC USD 1.42 billion (6.0%)
Trading volume is heavily concentrated in stablecoins, with USDT and USDC together accounting for over 67%. BTC, ETH, and ZEC follow, trailed by a longer tail including wNEAR, SOL, and others.
The gap between Intents and the base chain in terms of REV has widened significantly. In Q2 2026, Intents generated USD 9.3 million in aggregate fees, compared to USD 137,000 for the NEAR chain itself. By this metric, user-paid fees from Intents are approximately 68 times those of the base chain.
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Privacy is one of the main pillars of NEAR’s current roadmap. Confidential Intents (CIs) add a layer of privacy on top of standard Intents, using the same model but routing execution to a restricted environment where details such as assets, amounts, routing, or counterparties remain undisclosed until settlement.
It should be noted that this does not constitute full cryptographic privacy. The current design relies on a private NEAR shard, permissioned validators, and TEE-based infrastructure; thus, 'confidential execution' is a more accurate description than 'full privacy.'
By the end of June, total TVL for Intents had risen to USD 78.7 million, with Confidential Intents reaching USD 28.5 million—approximately 36%. Confidential execution is becoming a significant component of the Intents stack.
At NEARCON 2026, NEAR AI unveiled IronClaw, a secure runtime environment designed for autonomous agents. Inspired by OpenClaw, it is an open-source Rust implementation built around principles of privacy, tool isolation, and credential protection.
Its key feature is sandboxed execution. IronClaw runs untrusted tools within isolated containers, limiting the scope of access available to agent tools and containing the impact in case of anomalous or compromised tool behavior. Its design also ensures that credentials are never exposed to large language models.
Another component is infrastructure integration. NEAR AI positions IronClaw as part of a broader confidential computing stack, which includes NEAR AI Cloud, encrypted enclaves, private inference, and a confidential GPU marketplace. In this setup, IronClaw provides the agent runtime, the marketplace supplies private compute power, and Intents delivers the transaction and settlement layer.
The AI product roadmap remains in its early stages. IronClaw's public repositories remain active, but publicly visible evidence of adoption is currently limited.
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Tempo is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, built for one purpose: fast, low-cost stablecoin payments. Transaction fees are paid directly in stablecoins, which the protocol automatically converts into validators’ preferred tokens. The mainnet launched on March 18, 2026.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
In Q2 2026, Tempo processed approximately $386 million in stablecoin transfer volume (excluding minting, vault, and fee system addresses). Volume grew from $23 million in March (its first partial month post-mainnet launch) to $63 million in April, $118 million in May, and $205 million in June. At June’s pace, the chain’s annualized stablecoin payment volume would be around $2.5 billion.
Transaction fees have been deliberately kept very low. Total fees in Q2 2026 amounted to roughly $39,800, with a median fee per transaction of $0.0012, almost entirely paid in pathUSD and USDC.e.
April stood out significantly, accounting for $28,900 of that total in a single month. Gas prices remained steady throughout the quarter at 20–21 gwei, so the variation stemmed not from price changes but from shifts in transaction types. April saw a concentration of compute-intensive activity: cross-chain bridging, NFT marketplace trades, token approvals, and new contract deployments. These operations consumed approximately 276,000 gas units, compared to just 52,000 for standard stablecoin transfers—resulting in higher fees despite unchanged gas prices. In May and June, the chain reverted to lightweight stablecoin transfers, and median fees dropped back to around $0.001.
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Stablecoin TVL reached approximately $40.2 million by the end of Q2 2026, a roughly sevenfold increase from $6.3 million at the start of the quarter. The gap between TVL and transfer volume reflects the nature of a payments-focused chain: the same stablecoins are repeatedly transacted rather than sitting idle on-chain.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
The two largest stablecoins on Tempo, USDT0 and USDC.e, both entered via cross-chain bridges and were not natively issued on this network. USDT0 uses LayerZero’s burn-and-mint standard: USDT is locked on Ethereum, and USDT0 is minted on Tempo upon receipt; it is burned when leaving. USDC.e arrives through Stargate, a liquidity pool-based bridge that also relies on LayerZero. Because both stablecoins enter through bridges, the majority of their transaction volume flows through a handful of bridging contracts and routers rather than directly between end users.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Caption: Q2 2026 transaction volume: USDT0 at $177.5 million, pathUSD at $88.7 million, USDC.e at $71.3 million, DLUSD at $43.2 million, and USDB at $5.2 million
The difference lies in the breadth of usage. USDC.e transactions involved approximately 146,000 unique senders across 2.3 million transfers, with identifiable payers including Deel. In contrast, USDT0 had only about 2,100 senders and 90,000 transfers, with the largest senders being automated LayerZero bridge and routing contracts.
pathUSD represents a different case. Issued by Bridge, a subsidiary of Stripe, it is minted directly on Tempo and recorded 800,000 transfers from approximately 49,000 senders, with no bridging intermediary involved.
Thus, pathUSD and USDC.e reflect genuine multi-user payment activity, whereas USDT0’s transaction volume primarily stems from bridging and operational flows. This activity is still counted because it passes through bridge and router contracts rather than system addresses.
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The clearest enterprise use case on the network is global payroll platform Deel. In Q2 2026, its payout wallet distributed approximately $30 million to around 7,200 contractors.
Author: Bitwise, 'Staking Report Q3 2026' Editor: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher In Q2 2026, market sentiment and network fundamentals diverged. Across the networks covered in this report, block space became cheaper, on-chain activity increased, and fee revenue declined. The revenue decline was primarily driven by protocol design choices, as chains intentionally made block space more abundant and cheaper. While weakening demand did affect some networks, this was not a universal trend. The divergence between revenue and usage was the dominant theme this quarter: fees fell while usage rose. Following Ethereum’s increase in the gas limit, it now processes 26 transactions per second, up from 15 a year ago. Solana processed approximately 10 billion non-voting transactions, exceeding any quarter in 2025. Avalanche’s C-Chain handled 236 million transactions, up from 58 million a year earlier. Cheaper block space does not necessarily indicate weaker demand. Institutional adoption became quantifiable for the first time this quarter. On the staking front, Ethereum’s active staked supply reached a record high of 40.2 million ETH, representing 33% of total supply. Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYP tokens under Hyperliquid’s AQAv2 framework...
Settling global contractor salaries in stablecoins with near-zero fees is precisely what Tempo was built to do. Within the first 100 days of mainnet launch, the network’s annualized transaction volume has already exceeded $2.5 billion, and with confirmed enterprise adoption like Deel’s, pathUSD has become the leading natively issued stablecoin on-chain.
Risk Disclaimer: The above content only represents the author's view. It does not represent any position or investment advice of Futu. Futu makes no representation or warranty.Read more
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