2.2 times Ethereum's volume on an eighth of the capital: Solana turns over 26.6 percent a day

In the 24 hours to Monday morning, tokens worth $1.57 billion changed hands on Solana's decentralised exchanges. On Ethereum the same period brought $706 million. Solana therefore turns over more than twice as much, even though its applications hold only an eighth of the capital. That divergence is the real finding of the week's opening, and it says more about the state of play than the price itself: SOL stood at $105.80 on Monday morning, 2.7 percent above the previous day but still 6.0 percent below its level a week ago (CoinGecko, as of October 19, 8:45 UTC).

Over a monthly view the question is not how much gets traded but whose money is being moved. Where the price can point over a span of months is set out in our Solana price prediction. This article works out the metric that connects the two, and shows what it means for your tax position and your buying route in Germany.

Solana turns over $1.57 billion in a single day

The figures come from the data at DefiLlama, queried on Monday morning. Across all decentralised exchanges on Solana combined, volume over the preceding 24 hours came to $1.566 billion. That is 25.0 percent more than the day before. Over seven days trading adds up to $14.03 billion, a rise of 22.6 percent on the previous week.

A Sunday is not a strong trading day. That turnover picked up anyway, while the price slipped on a weekly view, is the first sign that positions were being rotated rather than added. Solana's market capitalisation stood at $62.4 billion on Monday morning, with 589.4 million SOL in circulation out of a total of 636.0 million.

Ethereum reaches $706 million on eight times the capital

The same query for Ethereum returns $705.9 million over 24 hours, up 20.5 percent, and $8.07 billion over seven days, here only 1.2 percent more than the week before. Solana traded 2.22 times Ethereum's volume on Sunday, and on a weekly comparison the gap is widening.

It is the second figure that makes the comparison meaningful. In total value locked, the capital committed to a blockchain's applications, Ethereum stands at $49.86 billion and Solana at $5.89 billion. That is a ratio of 8.5 to 1 in Ethereum's favour. Two networks whose committed capital differs by a factor of eight come out in reverse order on trading volume.

The turnover: 26.6 against 1.4 percent of committed capital

Those two figures yield a metric that the usual dashboards do not carry: daily turnover. It sets a day's trading volume against committed capital and answers the question of how often the same dollar is moved in a day.

For Solana the sum is $1.566 billion divided by $5.89 billion, so 26.6 percent. Every day a good quarter of all committed capital is pushed through trading once. For Ethereum the same sum reads $706 million divided by $49.86 billion, so 1.4 percent. Turnover on Solana is therefore around 19 times as high. Both values are our own calculations from the DefiLlama figures cited above for October 19; the platform itself does not publish this ratio.

As a metric, turnover is neither good nor bad; it describes the design. High turnover means a network serves a lot of trading on little capital. Low turnover means capital sits and works there rather than being moved.

Why bots move the same capital several times a day

The explanation lies in the costs. A transaction on Solana costs fractions of a cent, and a block closes in under a second. Under those conditions a trade pays off at tiny price differences. Trading bots and aggregators buy the same token several times a day on one exchange and sell it on the next, each time for a spread of a few tenths of a percent. Every one of those passes shows up in the statistics as volume, even though no new money has entered the network.

A second data point supports that reading. The stablecoin base on Solana, the money standing ready in dollar-pegged tokens such as USDC, came to $15.49 billion on Monday (DefiLlama, October 19). That base is therefore around two and a half times the size of the committed capital of $5.89 billion. On Ethereum, $144.04 billion sits in stablecoins against $49.86 billion of committed capital, a ratio of just under 3 to 1. On Solana, then, an above-average share of money is parked in trading liquidity and a below-average share is tied up in lending and yield applications.

Total value locked describes the sum of all deposits held in a blockchain's financial applications, for instance in lending markets, liquidity pools and staking derivatives. When that figure rises, investors have brought capital into the network and committed it there. When it falls, they have withdrawn it, or the price of the deposited tokens has dropped.

Counted in SOL, the network holds less capital than in June

A TVL measured in dollars mixes two things: how many tokens are deposited and what those tokens cost. If the price falls, the dollar figure drops even when nobody has withdrawn anything. So the counter-calculation in SOL is worth doing. For that, DefiLlama's daily TVL was divided by CoinGecko's respective daily closing price, over the past 120 days.

The result: on October 19 the committed capital corresponded to 55.68 million SOL. On October 18 it was still 57.04 million, on October 10 it was 56.47 million. Ninety days ago, on July 21, 63.75 million SOL sat in the network, and the window's high dates from June 25 at 69.08 million. From that high, 19.4 percent of the deposited tokens have gone in not quite four months, and that is independent of the price. On only 20 of 120 days was the figure lower than today; the window's low falls on September 29 at 54.09 million SOL.

This calculation is not someone else's analysis but our own work from two freely available series. The counter-calculation separates the price problem from the quantity problem and shows that the decline in committed capital does not hang on the fallen price alone.

What has changed since Sunday's emission article

On Sunday evening we worked through Solana's emission here: 22.88 million new SOL a year and $1.56 billion sitting in the funds, as set out in our piece on the emission of 22.9 million SOL a year. Three things have shifted since.

First the price: on Sunday SOL averaged $103.36 over the day, on Monday morning $105.80, a rise of 2.4 percent. Second the committed capital: it fell from $5.896 billion to $5.890 billion, and counted in SOL from 57.04 million to 55.68 million. The decline in the token quantity is therefore much larger than the one in the dollar sum, because the higher price masks the difference. Third the trading: daily volume picked up by a quarter.

Taken together that means the price rise from Sunday to Monday came with more trading but less deposited capital. Sunday's emission question remains open, because no vote has been held on proposal SIMD-0550 since.

The levels: $100.48 below, $106.05 above

On October 14 we named the $100 level here as a test. The level has held since, but without much room. In the 24 hours to Monday morning the low was $100.48 and the high $106.05 (CoinGecko). The current price therefore sits 5.3 percent above the daily low and 0.2 percent below the daily high.

What justifies those two values is that they were actually traded this weekend, not a chart pattern. To the upside the next marker is the level of October 12, when SOL averaged $111.25 over the day; the figure $109.07 dates from October 10. To the downside the round $100 stands, and its defence has now been running for five days. SOL is 63.9 percent away from its all-time high of $293.31 on January 19, 2025.

$9.71 million in fees in one day, and who gets them

High turnover is not without consequence; it generates income. Fees accruing on the Solana blockchain added up to $9.71 million in the 24 hours to Monday morning and to $79.76 million over seven days (DefiLlama, October 19). Measured against committed capital of $5.89 billion, the daily figure amounts to a rate of 0.16 percent, which annualised puts it in the order of 60 percent of the capital committed today.

That extrapolation is an arithmetic check, not a forecast, because fees swing with trading. The check does show what the turnover ratio means in economic terms: a network with little committed capital and a lot of trading earns from movement, not from sitting still. Part of that income flows through the block reward to the validators and hence to the stakers, the rest to the applications the trading went through.

How to work out the turnover yourself

The metric needs no paid data source. Two values are enough, and both are freely available online.

1. Open the blockchain's page at DefiLlama, for instance the overview page for Solana. It carries the current TVL and the 24-hour trading volume of the decentralised exchanges.
2. Divide the volume by the TVL and convert the result into percent. For Solana on October 19: 1.566 divided by 5.89 gives 0.266, so 26.6 percent.
3. Repeat that for a second blockchain and compare. The important thing is to read both values on the same day and at the same time, because the 24-hour volume shifts continuously.

Anyone recording the series over several weeks will see whether a network is drawing in capital or only trading. If volume rises while TVL falls, turnover grows and the network lives more off short-term trading. If both rise, new money is arriving. For judging a coin that is the more honest series than the volume figure alone, which projects like to advertise with.

Every swap starts the one-year period again

High turnover in the network has a tax counterpart in the portfolio, and in Germany that hits everyone who swaps actively. Gains from selling cryptocurrencies are a private disposal under section 23 of the Income Tax Act. If more than twelve months lie between purchase and sale, the gain stays tax-free. Below that it is taxed at your personal income tax rate as soon as the sum of all private disposal gains for a year reaches the exemption threshold of €1,000.

What counts as a disposal is decisive here. Swapping SOL into a stablecoin or into another token is also a disposal, and for the newly acquired holding the one-year period starts from scratch. Take part in the turnover and swap back and forth several times within a few weeks, and at the end of the year you hold not one position with one holding period but many, each with a fresh one. We track the current state of the political debate about that period on our page on the crypto holding period.

In practice that means you need a record of every swap with the date, the amount and the euro value, because the tax office assesses the holding period per acquisition. Which programs build that allocation out of exchange data is shown in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers. A separate rule applies to staking income: staking rewards count on receipt as other income under section 22 number 3 of the Income Tax Act, with its own exemption threshold of €256 a year.

Buying route and custody: where the paths differ

Since the EU regulation MiCA came into full effect, anyone wanting to buy SOL in Germany has essentially two routes. The first runs through an authorised service provider that holds the tokens for you. There the key sits with the provider, access is simple, and losing your login details can usually be remedied. Which providers charge what and which authorisation they hold is set out in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.

The second route is self-custody on a hardware wallet. You then hold the private key yourself, nobody can freeze your holding, and you carry the risk of losing the key alone. For staking SOL the difference is concrete: with self-custody you delegate to a validator yourself and pick its commission, whereas with a custodian the custodian decides on the offer and keeps part of the income. The range of terms is shown in the comparison of staking providers.

To put the yield in context: the reward for staking SOL comes out of the emission of new tokens and out of part of the network fees. Since emission keeps falling under the schedule described on Sunday, the future yield hangs more heavily on the fees, and therefore on precisely the turnover this article is about.

Our assessment: trading without new money

From the newsroom's point of view the turnover carries the story of Solana as the fastest trading venue, but it does not carry the story of capital inflows. The evidence sits above: volume rose 22.6 percent over seven days, while committed capital counted in SOL fell from 56.47 to 55.68 million and the price lost 6.0 percent. More trading on fewer deposited tokens with a falling price is the pattern of rotation within the network.

Against that stands the fee side. $79.76 million over seven days is real income, not a bookkeeping entry, and part of it flows to the stakers. A network that earns from movement does not strictly need growing committed capital to work economically. Anyone holding SOL should therefore follow both series and not the volume figure alone, because on its own it does not answer the question of new money. This is explicitly not a recommendation to buy or sell.

Solana at $105.80: the turnover carries, the inflow is missing

Monday morning's position can be worked through in three steps.

1. Work out the turnover ratio for Solana and a comparison blockchain yourself once and note it with the date, so that in two weeks you have a series of your own. The instructions are above.
2. Check the purchase date for every SOL holding in your portfolio, and with it when the one-year period expires. Which programs build that out of exchange data is shown by the comparison of crypto tax software.
3. Decide deliberately between custody at a provider and your own wallet, because the staking terms hang on it. Provider terms are in the overview of staking platforms.

(As of October 19, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)