Solana Fee Share Slips to Single Digits as Hyperliquid and BNB Chain Surge
Solana’s share of blockchain transaction fees has dropped to single digits for the first time in 2025, signaling a notable shift in network activity as rival chains like Hyperliquid and BNB Chain gain momentum. The decline underscores a changing competitive landscape among top layer-1 networks as users and developers diversify their activity across multiple ecosystems.
Data from Token Terminal and DefiLlama shows Solana’s fee market share has fallen to approximately 9%, down sharply from more than 50% earlier in the year. This drop comes amid surging transaction volumes and fee generation on newer, performance-focused chains that are attracting both retail traders and institutional users.
Fee share is a critical metric used to measure the economic activity of blockchain networks, reflecting both user demand and the sustainability of network revenue. Solana’s earlier dominance was fueled by its popularity in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), meme coins, and high-throughput decentralized platforms. However, recent quarters have viewn that dominance eroded as new players offer quicker execution environments and specialized applications that appeal to professional traders.
Growing competition in on-chain trading
Hyperliquid, an emerging derivatives-focused blockchain, has rapidly captured attention for its low-latency trading engine and growing liquidity. Its fee revenue has risen steadily, supported by an influx of perps traders viewking CEX-level execution with on-chain transparency. BNB Chain, meanwhile, continues to lead in retail DeFi and gaming applications, maintaining a broad base of active users across Asia and other emerging markets.
Industry analysts note that Solana’s decline in fee share does not necessarily indicate a loss of overall activity but rather reflects a broader redistribution of user engagement across the multi-chain ecosystem. Solana remains among the top chains by total transactions and daily active addresses, but its share of global on-chain fees shows a more balanced and competitive environment emerging in 2025.
Network diversification and evolving market dynamics
The shift in fee market share highlights a maturing blockchain industry where liquidity, applications, and developers are no longer concentrated in a handful of ecosystems. Instead, value creation is spreading across multiple chains, each optimized for diverse types of applications — from high-frequency trading and DeFi to gaming and consumer use cases.
For Solana, the coming months will be crucial. Developers are rolling out upgrades to improve network scalability and DeFi infrastructure, aiming to attract liquidity back to the ecosystem. Key initiatives include new stablecoin integrations, institutional-grade trading protocols, and rollouts of advanced Block confirmer features to enhance throughput and stability.
Despite short-term fluctuations in fee dominance, Solana remains a leading player in the broader blockchain economy. Its developer community remains active, venture interest is steady, and its performance advantages continue to position it as a top choice for high-volume decentralized applications.
As the blockchain landscape evolves, the redistribution of fee revenue across Solana, Hyperliquid, and BNB Chain illustrates the growing complexity and competitiveness of the sector. The era of single-chain dominance is giving way to a multi-chain paradigm — one defined by specialization, interoperability, and user-driven growth.
