Crypto · The Breakdown · SOL
The Issuance Curve
Just Got Steeper.
The bull case for Solana as the people who hold it actually make it, the supply schedule the validators just voted to cut twice as fast, and the case against, at the same weight.
Solana issues new SOL on a disinflation curve, currently 3.666% a year and falling toward a terminal 1.5%. On 28 August 2026 SIMD-0550 passed with 67% of participating stake, doubling the annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30% and removing an estimated 18.9 million SOL of issuance over six years. Half of every transaction fee is burned.
Inflation Today
Down from 8.000% at genesis. Source: Solana Compass, 3 Sep 2026.
Disinflation Rate
Doubled from 15% by SIMD-0550, 28 Aug 2026. Terminal is 1.5%.
Of Every Fee Burned
The rest goes to the validator that processed the transaction.
Below The High
$98.88 against $293.31 on 19 Jan 2025. Source: CoinGecko.
The Bull Case, As Bulls Make It
Five arguments, stated at their strongest. This is the case the people who hold it make, not a forecast from this site.
The Supply Curve Was Just Bent Down
SIMD-0550, authored by Helius contributors Lostin and 0xIchigo, doubled the annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%. It closed on 28 August 2026 with 67% of participating stake and 176.29 million SOL voting in favour. Terminal inflation of 1.5% now arrives in about 2.8 years instead of 5.7, and roughly 18.9 million fewer SOL get issued over six years. The bull argument is that a chain which votes to pay itself less is a chain whose holders are setting policy.
Half Of Every Fee Is Destroyed
Fifty percent of every transaction fee is burned rather than paid out. The chain does 2.222 billion dollars of DEX volume in a day and carries 15.767 billion of stablecoins, and every one of those transactions removes SOL from existence. Issuance is the tap and the burn is the drain, and only one of the two is falling by design.
Alpenglow Is A Consensus Rewrite, Not A Patch
SIMD-0326 passed in September 2025 with 52% of total stake participating. It replaces Proof of History and Tower BFT outright and targets 100 to 150 milliseconds of finality against roughly 13 seconds today, with mainnet deployment targeted for Q3 or Q4 2026 alongside the Agave 4.1 client. Moving votes off chain also frees the block space validator voting currently consumes.
The ETF Bid Stakes What It Buys
Bitwise launched BSOL on 28 October 2025 and it crossed 1.018 billion dollars of assets by 26 August 2026, taking roughly 79% of cumulative net flows into Solana ETF products. It holds about 9.33 million SOL and stakes about 96% of it, passing through a 5.80% yield. That is a buyer whose position is locked into the validator set rather than sitting on an exchange.
The Activity Is Not Hypothetical
DefiLlama shows 5.729 billion dollars of TVL, 15.767 billion of stablecoins on the chain, 2.222 billion of DEX volume in twenty four hours and 4.64 million dollars of application revenue in the same day. Whatever anyone thinks of the assets being traded, the throughput is real and it is being paid for.
The Case Against, At The Same Weight
The other half. If you skip it you are reading an advertisement.
A Billion Dollars Of ETF Buying Did Not Hold The Price
BSOL took in over a billion dollars and SOL still trades at $98.88 against a January 2025 high of $293.31, about 66% below it. The cleanest test of the institutional bid ran for ten months and the chart did not care.
It Is Still Inflationary, And Terminally So
Even after SIMD-0550, the floor is 1.5% a year forever. Not zero, not capped, not a schedule that ends. The comparison to a fixed supply asset is one Solana does not qualify for.
The Vote Is Not The Feature
SIMD-0550 passed but remained under review, and validator clients still have to add and support a feature gate before it activates at an epoch boundary. Until that ships, the faster disinflation is an intention.
Forty Eight Million SOL Have Not Reached The Market
585.292 million of 633.362 million is circulating. The other 7.6% exists and arrives eventually, on top of the ongoing issuance.
The Chain Earns Less Than The Apps On It
612,579 dollars of chain fees in a day against a 57.87 billion dollar market cap. The applications took 4.64 million in the same day. Value is being created on Solana faster than it is being captured by SOL.
What I Take From It
Not advice. How the argument reads to someone who builds businesses rather than trades tokens.
A System That Votes To Charge Itself Less Is Unusual
Most things with an issuance dial turn it up when conditions get hard. Two thirds of participating stake voted to turn it down while the price sat two thirds off its high. That is a governance signal, and governance signals are slower and more durable than price signals.
Fee Capture Is The Whole Question
Four point six million dollars of app revenue against six hundred thousand of chain fees is the same problem every platform has. The rails are cheap and the businesses on top are not. Whether SOL is a good asset comes down to whether that ratio moves, and nothing in the supply argument answers it.
Shipped Beats Voted
Alpenglow has been approved for a year and is targeted for a client release. SIMD-0550 has passed and is waiting on a feature gate. Both are real and neither is live. I price a roadmap at what has shipped, not at what has been agreed.
Prices, market caps, supplies, all time highs and all time lows from CoinGecko, read 3 September 2026. Solana issuance and burn figures from Solana Compass, SIMD-0550 from crypto.news, Alpenglow from Kiln, BSOL from CryptoBriefing. Sui architecture and history from Sygnum Bank, the Mysticeti v2 figures from the Sui blog, the unlock schedule from Tokenomist. Zcash halving schedule from CoinDataFlow, the shielded pool and the Ironwood upgrade from Phemex, the Orchard bug from KuCoin, the NU7 vote from CryptoSlate. Render tokenomics from the Render Network knowledge base, RNP-006 and RNP-018, and from RenderCon 2026 coverage. Jupiter protocol figures from DefiLlama, the net zero emissions vote from SolanaFloor, the Litterbox Trust and the 70% proposal from the Jupiter Research forum. Chain level TVL, stablecoin and fee figures from DefiLlama. A snapshot on one day, not a live feed, and not a price prediction.
The Other Positions
Same shape, same rule: the bull case and the case against, at the same weight, with every figure sourced and dated.
Common Questions
That the validator set just voted to halve the time it takes to reach terminal inflation, cutting an estimated 18.9 million SOL of issuance over six years, that half of every transaction fee is already burned, that Alpenglow targets 100 to 150 millisecond finality against roughly 13 seconds today, that the Bitwise BSOL ETF holds about 9.33 million SOL and stakes 96% of it, and that the chain moves 2.222 billion dollars of DEX volume a day.
3.666% a year as at 3 September 2026, down from 8.000% at genesis. It falls on a disinflation curve toward a terminal rate of 1.5%. SIMD-0550, which closed on 28 August 2026 with 67% of participating stake, doubles the annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%, reaching that terminal rate in about 2.8 years instead of 5.7. It still requires a validator client feature gate before it activates.
Yes. Fifty percent of every transaction fee is burned and the remaining half goes to the validator that processed the transaction. Whether the chain is net deflationary in any period depends on whether that burn exceeds issuance, and at 3.666% inflation it currently does not.
SIMD-0326, a replacement for Solana’s Proof of History and Tower BFT consensus. It passed in September 2025 with 52% of total network stake participating and targets 100 to 150 milliseconds of finality against roughly 13 seconds today, with full mainnet deployment targeted for Q3 or Q4 2026 alongside the Agave 4.1 validator client. It also moves validator votes off chain.
That over a billion dollars flowed into the Bitwise BSOL staking ETF between October 2025 and August 2026 and SOL still sits about 66% below its January 2025 high, that terminal inflation is 1.5% and never zero, and that the chain captured 612,579 dollars of fees on a day the applications running on it captured 4.64 million.
A Thesis You Cannot
Argue Against Is Not One.
Every position on this site is published with the reasoning and the counter argument attached. That is the whole standard.
Not financial advice.