Solana isn’t just another Alternative-Layer 1 ticker anymore. By late 2025, global Solana exchange-traded products (ETPs) had attracted more than $700 million in assets under management, and the first U.S. spot Solana Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars in its opening week—clear evidence that institutional money now treats Solana as a serious portfolio asset, not a side bet.
On-chain, Solana has been just as aggressive. In late 2025, analytics from Artemis showed Solana’s monthly active addresses reaching nearly 100 million, consistently matching the combined total of all other Layer 1 (L1) and Layer 2 (L2) blockchains. Additionally, its annual network revenue has recently rivaled Ethereum’s, driven by high-volume decentralized applications.
At the same time, payment giants like Visa and Stripe have fully integrated USDC support on Solana, letting merchants settle or accept stablecoin payments on mainstream rails to achieve 24/7 liquidity rather than relying on experimental side projects.
Put together, Solana has shifted from a “fast experimental chain” to a high-throughput backbone for DeFi protocols, NFT markets, stablecoin payments, and consumer apps. Its combination of deterministic finality and ultra-low transaction fees makes it attractive not just for traders, but for businesses that need high-volume, real-time settlement.
If your company is exploring blockchain for payments, loyalty, tokenization, gaming, or new customer experiences, understanding Solana helps you decide how—and how much—it deserves a place in your roadmap.
What Is Solana?
Solana is a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain designed to process thousands of transactions per second at a minimal cost, while still being a permissionless, public network. It uses a combination of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and a unique timing technique called Proof-of-History (PoH) to order transactions efficiently and reduce bottlenecks.
A few core traits:
- Smart contract platform – Developers can deploy programs (smart contracts) for DeFi, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), games, and more.
- High throughput & low latency – Solana regularly handles thousands of Transactions Per Second (TPS) with sub-second block times.
- Very low fees – Typical transaction costs are a fraction of a cent, often around $0.00025–$0.0028 per transaction.
This mix makes Solana appealing for consumer-scale and high-frequency use cases, where Ethereum mainnet gas fees would be prohibitive.
How Solana Works
Under the hood, Solana’s performance comes from a few key design choices:
Proof of History (PoH) + Proof of Stake (PoS)
- PoH is a cryptographic clock: validators can agree on the order of events without waiting for everyone to talk to everyone else first.
- PoS determines who gets to produce blocks and validate transactions, based on the amount of SOL staked.
The result: validators can process and order many transactions in parallel rather than sequentially replaying everything.
Parallel Execution & Local Fee Markets
- Solana uses parallel transaction processing, so non-conflicting transactions run at the same time.
- It also introduced local fee markets, which help prevent one busy app from making fees spike for the entire network.
Together, these features are designed to keep Solana fast and affordable as usage grows—critical for any business that expects real user volume, not just a demo.
Why Businesses Are Looking at Solana
1. Cost and Speed for Real-World Applications
For many businesses, transaction cost and speed determine whether a blockchain use case is viable or just a slide in a pitch deck.
- Solana transactions typically confirm in under a second and cost far less than a cent, making it over 1,000x cheaper than traditional card rails for simple transfers in some estimates.
- This opens the door to microtransactions, high-frequency rewards, in-app actions, and machine-to-machine payments that would be uneconomical on slower, more expensive networks.
If your product model relies on frequent, small on-chain actions—think in-game items, loyalty points, or streaming payments—these economics matter.
2. Growing Ecosystem: DeFi, NFTs, and Consumer Apps
Solana’s ecosystem has matured rapidly:
- DeFi: Lending markets, Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs), perps, and structured products run on Solana with growing daily volume and TVL.
- NFTs & consumer apps: Solana has hosted some of the most active NFT communities and a wave of social and gaming apps tailored to mainstream users.
- Stablecoins & payments: USDC and other stablecoins are widely used on Solana, and payment and remittance apps are building on those rails.
For a business, a richer ecosystem means more integrations: you can plug into existing wallets, liquidity, marketplaces, and user communities instead of building every piece yourself.
3. Better UX for Non-Crypto-Native Customers
High fees and long confirmation times make blockchains feel clunky for everyday users.
Solana’s performance enables:
- Near-instant in-app actions (minting, trading, claiming rewards)
- Low, predictable fees that can be abstracted away or subsidised
- Mobile-first apps that feel closer to Web2 experiences
For businesses that care about conversion and retention, this user experience can be more important than ideological debates about architectures.
What Can Businesses Build on Solana?
Here are some concrete directions where Solana can be useful for companies.
1. Payments, Remittances, and Stablecoin Flows
Solana’s fast, cheap transactions and strong USDC support make it a serious candidate for:
- Cross-border payments and remittances
- Merchant settlement and Business-to-Business (B2B) transfers
- Treasury movements between exchanges, custodians, and banks
Major payment players have already piloted using USDC on public chains (including Solana) for settlement, citing faster movement and lower costs.
2. Loyalty, Rewards, and Points
Because on-chain actions are so cheap, businesses can:
- Issue tokenized loyalty points that users can earn, trade, or redeem
- Create on-chain rewards for engagement (watching content, referrals, purchases)
- Build interoperable rewards ecosystems across multiple brands
Solana’s throughput helps ensure these micro-rewards don’t become prohibitively expensive.
3. Gaming and Entertainment
Solana has become a hub for on-chain gaming, NFTs, and social apps, where performance and low latency are critical.
Game studios and entertainment brands can:
- Mint and trade in-game items or collectibles at low cost
- Run real-time in-game economies without punishing gas fees
- Integrate secondary markets and royalties natively on-chain
4. DeFi and On-Chain Trading Products
If you’re a fintech, broker, or exchange operator:
- Solana offers deepening liquidity in DEXs and perps
- Building structured products or yield strategies becomes easier on a high-speed chain
- You can tap into DeFi rails (lending, borrowing, margin) while using institutional custody in the background
5. Tokenization and Real-World Assets (RWAs)
Tokenising assets—securities, invoices, real estate fractions, or fund units—benefits from:
- Low fees (so rebalancing and transfers stay economical)
- Fast settlement and instant ownership updates
- Composability with DeFi (e.g., tokenized assets used as collateral)
Solana’s design is well-suited to high-frequency asset movement, which matters for markets where liquidity and quick settlement are part of the value proposition.
How to Decide If Solana Fits Your Business
Solana is worth serious consideration if your roadmap involves:
- High-frequency, low-value transactions (micro-payments, rewards, gaming)
- Consumer-grade User Experience (UX) where latency and fees directly impact conversion
- DeFi or trading products that benefit from fast execution and deepening liquidity
- Tokenized assets that need frequent movement or composability
You may lean toward other platforms if:
- Your core need is conservative, long-term settlement with minimal change
- Your regulators or internal risk teams are more comfortable with older networks
- You want to reuse existing Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) codebases and tooling with minimal adaptation
Most serious builders don’t pick just one chain forever. They start where product–market fit and UX are strongest, while keeping the option open to go multi-chain later.
Solana, Infrastructure, and the Bigger Picture
Solana’s current moment isn’t just about fast block times and low fees—it’s about where it now sits in the broader financial stack. With spot products, Exchange Traded Products (ETPs), and structured notes bringing Solana into traditional portfolios, more institutions are treating $SOL and Solana-based assets as serious exposures, not side bets.
That shift changes the stakes: your users expect seamless, app-like experiences on Solana, while your treasury, risk, and compliance teams need full visibility and control over how those flows move.
That’s why many exchanges, wallets, and fintechs pair Solana with infrastructure-grade custody and compliance stacks behind the scenes. Platforms like ChainUp provide:
- Multi-Party Computation (MPC) wallets and tiered hot–warm–cold architectures
- Policy-based approvals and segregated client accounts
- KYT, sanctions screening, and Travel Rule tooling integrated with wallet flows
If you’re exploring Solana for payments, DeFi, or tokenization and want institutional-level security behind the scenes, consider talking to ChainUp about how our infrastructure stack can support Solana alongside other major networks—so your users get a fast, low-fee experience while your risk and operations teams get the control they need.
