Validators process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Solana is a smart contract platform for decentralized applications (a blockchain). Solana was founded by Anatoly Yakovenko, Greg Fitzgerald, Raj Gokal, etc. and launched in 2020.

SOL holders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the transaction fees paid by users (revenue). Solana’s investors include Polychain Capital, ParaFi capital, Passport capital, etc.

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Solana

# Solana Earnings Methodology

## 1. Overview

Earnings measures the net value retained by the Solana network after subtracting all protocol expenses from protocol revenue. Protocol revenue is derived from the portion of transaction fees that are burned by the network. Expenses are represented by token incentives, specifically the issuance of SOL as staking and voting rewards. This metric provides insight into the on-chain economic sustainability of the Solana blockchain by comparing fee-based income against security expenditures.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: Block-level fee data, reward distribution records, and transaction-level configuration data, covering Solana
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds for SOL

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Transaction fee extraction

- **Purpose**: Capture the total volume of fees paid by users for network activity.
- **Logic**: Total fees are aggregated from block data. This includes fees collected from both successful and failed transactions across vote and non-vote instructions. Amounts are normalized by decimal precision.

### Component B: Protocol revenue calculation

- **Purpose**: Determine the specific portion of transaction fees that is permanently removed from circulation.
- **Logic**: For historical data prior to the SIMD-0096 update, revenue is calculated as 50% of all transaction fees. For data following the implementation of SIMD-0096, revenue is calculated as 50% of base fees. Base fees are identified by subtracting priority fees and priority fee adjustments from total transaction fees for all vote and non-vote instructions. Priority fee adjustments are calculated for version 1 transactions starting September 15, 2026, by comparing configured priority fees against inferred priority fees (calculated as fees minus 5,000 lamports per signature). Configured priority fees are determined from transaction configuration fields, where an omitted priority fee is treated as zero if other resource configuration fields are detected.

### Component C: Expense tracking

- **Purpose**: Quantify the cost of network security and validator compensation.
- **Logic**: Protocol expenses are defined as the total value of token incentives issued. These are extracted from reward records where the reward type is categorized as 'staking' or 'voting'. The total amount of lamports distributed is aggregated daily and normalized by decimal precision.

### Component D: Earnings and USD conversion

- **Purpose**: Combine revenue and expenses into a final net earnings metric in USD.
- **Logic**: Earnings are calculated by subtracting the total expenses (token incentives) from protocol revenue. The resulting native SOL values are multiplied by end-of-day price feeds to determine the USD value. Daily totals are aggregated using UTC day boundaries.

_This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer._

Net profit (also profits, net income, profitability) — revenue remaining after subtracting expenses.

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Earnings

Earnings

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