Solana price prediction: DEX volume down 24 percent, can the price hold?

Solana is trading at $101.91 on Wednesday morning, almost exactly where the price closed on Tuesday evening. The number that matters more is not on the chart but in the blockchain's revenue data: decentralised exchanges on Solana handled $11.94 billion over the past seven days, a quarter less than in the week before. The fees the network earns from that trade fell by just under a fifth over the same period. Where the price can go over a horizon of months is set out in our Solana price prediction. For the days ahead, one thing holds: a price that stays put while revenue drains away rests on a narrower base than the ticker suggests.

Solana DEX volume falls 24 percent in seven days

Trading volume on Solana's decentralised exchanges came to $1.85 billion over the past 24 hours, 10.7 percent less than the day before. Across seven days the trade adds up to $11.94 billion, a drop of 24.2 percent against the previous week. The figures come from the open DefiLlama database, as of the early morning of October 28.

For the wider picture: over 30 days, DEX volume stands at $60.84 billion. Averaged down to a single week, that works out at a good $14.2 billion. The current week therefore also lags the monthly average, not only the week directly before it. Trading on Solana is not a one-day slump; it is a downward move that has now been running for two weeks.

A decentralised exchange, or DEX, is a venue that settles directly through contracts on the blockchain, with no middleman. Solana hosts the largest of these venues, and their volume is the best public gauge of how much real demand is moving through the network. When it falls, the blockchain earns less, and finding a counterparty for any large buy or sell also gets more expensive.

Network fees: $4.2 million in seven days

Fees follow trade at a short lag. Solana took in $4.20 million in network fees over the past seven days. In the week before that the figure was $5.17 million. That is a decline of 18.8 percent.

The daily path shows how steep the curve ran. On October 19 daily revenue stood at $781,529, on October 20 at $799,593. After that it fell without a break: $732,119, $631,016, $560,392, $477,322 and, on October 25, just $434,092. That is the lowest daily reading of the month. On October 26 revenue recovered to $568,346, but stayed well below the previous week's level.

For investors these numbers are not an end in themselves. They are the revenue side of a blockchain in which SOL is the means of payment for every transaction. Holding SOL means holding a share in a network whose business is currently shrinking. That need not move the price in the short term, as this week shows. Over a horizon of quarters, though, the link between network revenue and valuation has been tight at Solana.

REV: the revenue measure analysts use to value a blockchain

Analyses of Solana often use the abbreviation REV, short for Real Economic Value. It covers the sum of network fees and the payments users add voluntarily to secure an early place in a block. REV is the metric that lets a blockchain be looked at like a company, because it captures what users actually pay to use the network.

The logic behind it is simple. A blockchain without revenue is infrastructure without customers. At Solana, revenue over the past two years hung largely on trading in small, newly launched tokens. That trade has dried up in recent weeks, and it explains most of the drop in fees. At $5.73 billion, the capital locked in Solana applications is also below its level at the start of the week.

That leads to a sober read for the coming weeks. If DEX volume climbs back above $2.5 billion a day, fees return quickly to the $700,000 range. If it stays just under $2 billion, the revenue side stays weak. The direction of the price will be settled by that question rather than by a round number on the chart.

Solana since Monday evening: rising lows at $100.90

On Monday evening this column looked at why every second transaction dropped out of the count. Since then little has changed in the price and something has changed in the structure. On Tuesday SOL fell to $99.02 during the session and closed at $101.22. On Wednesday the low so far is $100.90 and the high $102.27.

The low has therefore moved up by almost two dollars while the high added only a good half dollar. The range is tightening and the price is running into a squeeze. Phases like this usually resolve quickly once a trigger arrives from outside. That trigger is in the calendar for this evening.

The Fed rate decision on the evening of October 28

The US central bank meets on October 27 and 28. That comes from the official meeting calendar of the Federal Reserve, which carries no linked decision for this date yet. The decision is announced on Wednesday evening European time, with the press conference half an hour later.

For Solana, the rate itself matters less than the market the decision lands in. A market with thin trade reacts more strongly to the same news than a liquid one, because less capital stands ready to absorb a move. DEX volume of $1.85 billion a day is exactly that kind of thin market. Anyone planning a larger order today should price that in.

Bitcoin is at $80,770 on Wednesday morning, practically unchanged from the day before, and Ethereum at $2,350, up 0.1 percent. Solana is 0.7 percent higher and is holding up slightly better than the broader market. This calm before a central bank date is normal and says nothing about the direction afterwards. All prices in this section refer to trading on the Kraken exchange on Wednesday morning.

Levels: $98.51 below, $103.01 above

The relevant levels of the current week both sit close to the price. On the downside, $98.51 is the lowest print since October 24. A price falling below it would resolve the squeeze to the downside and take Tuesday's low at $99.02 with it. On the upside stands $103.01, the high of October 24. Above that, the current month offers supply from earlier sessions only around $108.

The reasoning behind these two levels is deliberately plain. Both mark the edges of the range the price has moved in for five trading days, and neither comes from an indicator. In a market with falling volume, visible range edges carry more weight than any moving average, because that is where the orders of active traders sit.

One more note on scale: the span between $98.51 and $103.01 is around 4.6 percent. Anyone working with ten times leverage is already liquidated inside that ordinary weekly range. At three times leverage there is room down to the lower edge.

Futures market: thin trade widens the liquidation gap

Anyone trading SOL with leverage should run two calculations today. First, the distance between entry and liquidation price, measured against the 4.6 percent range the price has moved in this week. Second, the funding costs that accrue every hour on a leveraged position and quietly eat the return when the price runs sideways.

A thin market shifts both against the trader. The less depth sits in the book, the further the price jumps on a large order, and the more often a single move reaches a liquidation level that looked comfortable on paper. Terms for such positions differ sharply between venues; funding rates and fees vary by venue and are worth checking before any position.

Anyone buying without leverage is untouched by all of this. For those investors, thin trade is mainly a question of the spread at purchase, and there is more on that below.

Staking: 3.58 percent inflation goes entirely to validators

One part of the calculation is untouched by the weakness in fees. Solana is currently in epoch 1070, and the network's inflation rate stands at 3.58 percent a year. The share going to the foundation is zero; the entire new issuance flows to validators and so to the investors who delegate their SOL. These values can be queried at any time through the network's public interface.

That is why staking gains weight in a low-revenue phase: the reward hangs on the fixed inflation schedule, not on trading volume. If the fee component falls away, a validator's total yield drops somewhat, but the base amount stays. Anyone intending to hold their SOL for longer anyway gives that amount up by leaving the tokens sitting on an exchange without earning.

Two points belong in the balance. Delegated SOL is not immediately available; unstaking runs to the end of the current epoch. And providers differ widely in the share they keep as commission. Commission ranges from a few percent of the reward to a tenth, and it is deducted before payout.

Buying under MiCA: spread and fees in a thin market

Since the EU's MiCA regulation applies in full, any provider selling crypto assets in Germany needs authorisation from an EU state. That changes nothing about the price, but it does change the question of where a purchase is legally sound in the first place. Authorisation says nothing about cost: spread and order fee differ several times over between licensed houses.

In a week of thin trade that difference weighs more than usual. The spread, the gap between buying and selling price, widens when volume is low. At a price around $101, a spread that is 0.4 percent wider costs roughly four euros on a 1,000 euro investment, and it does so again on every purchase and every sale. Working with limit orders rather than market orders in such phases avoids most of it.

Which licensed houses in Germany list SOL and what they charge per order is shown in the crypto exchange comparison. The look is worth it above all for regular purchases, because small fee differences add up over the year.

Solana at $101.91: without trading revenue there is no next push

The situation fits in one sentence: the price is holding, the blockchain's business has been shrinking for two weeks, and the trigger that resolves this squeeze arrives from Washington this evening. Three steps follow from that:

1. Before the rate decision, check how far every leveraged position sits from the lower range edge at $98.51. Funding rates and venue fees are in the perp DEX comparison.
2. Work out what idle SOL costs at 3.58 percent network inflation a year. Provider terms are in the staking comparison.
3. Record the acquisition data of every purchase while the market is quiet. Which tools log that automatically is shown in the tax tool comparison.

DEX volume remains the number the coming weeks will be measured against. If it picks up, fees follow within days. If it stays where it is, the price stays a market without drive, in which every piece of outside news triggers unusually large jumps.

(As of October 28, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)