Solana Shifts Toward Stablecoin Payments as Institutional Use Grows, Report Finds

Solana (SOL) is increasingly being framed less as a ‘memecoin chain’ and more as a high-throughput settlement layer for ‘stablecoin payments’ and institutional money movement—an evolution that could reshape how the network is valued, but not necessarily how its token captures that value.

That’s the central argument of a recent report from Exilist, which said Solana’s first true product-market fit (PMF) was retail-driven speculation, while its next phase is coalescing around stablecoin transfers, payments, and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. The firm cautioned, however, that rising institutional usage does not automatically translate into stronger token economics for SOL.

On the surface, the chain’s fundamentals still look robust. As of June 26, 2026 UTC, Dune data cited by Exilist showed around 848 million weekly transactions and 7.86 million weekly active addresses, alongside roughly $4.62 billion in total value locked (TVL). Using DeFiLlama data for the same period, the report put Solana’s stablecoin market capitalization at about $14.875 billion, with active RWA market cap at roughly $1.83 billion and 24-hour decentralized exchange (DEX) volume near $2.05 billion. By pure usage and liquidity metrics, Exilist argued, Solana remains far from a “dead chain” narrative.

The issue is less about whether activity exists and more about what kind of activity is driving it. Exilist pointed to a clear cooling in the ultra-short-term speculative cycle that had powered much of Solana’s breakout—particularly memecoin trading and the Pump.fun launchpad ecosystem. In April 2026, Ethereum (ETH) overtook Solana in dApp revenue share for the first time in roughly two years, while Solana dApp revenue fell 13% to $84 million over the same period, which the report attributed largely to fading memecoin fee intensity.

Pump.fun’s own metrics further illustrate that shift. In June 2026, the platform’s token “graduation” or listing rate reportedly fell to around 0.26%, while Solana network fees were down approximately 84% compared with January. Daily revenue also dropped from prior peaks in the multi-million-dollar range to about $800,000 in early June. Exilist interpreted the drawdown as evidence that a meaningful share of Solana’s prior traffic depended more on ‘speculative concentration’ than on ‘durable demand.’

Developer indicators have also cooled, though Exilist described the move as a consolidation rather than a collapse. Citing Syndica’s May 2026 developer report, the firm said Solana’s active developer count declined roughly 29% from its May 2025 peak to about 1,220. Monthly active repositories fell from around 1,400 to 780, and monthly new developers dropped from roughly 550 to 270. Still, the report highlighted a rising share of professional developers—about 55%—and noted that developer events in May 2026 reached approximately 28,400, about 1.7 times the peak of the 2022 cycle.

Exilist argued Solana’s early formula—fast execution, low fees, and frictionless token issuance—was both its catalyst and its constraint. The same design that optimized onboarding for retail users left institutions with a lingering perception of Solana as a chain where “anyone can mint tokens and speculate.” For banks, card networks, and payment processors, the key purchasing criteria tend to be regulatory alignment, settlement assurance, operational accountability, and cost reduction—traits that cannot be met by repeating a retail-driven growth playbook.

As a result, the report said Solana’s second growth engine is converging on institutions, payments, stablecoins, and RWAs. In March 2026, the Solana Foundation launched the Solana Developer Platform (SDP), positioning it as an API-based toolkit for enterprises and financial institutions building on Solana. Exilist said SDP’s core modules include tokenized deposits, stablecoins, RWA issuance, fiat-to-stablecoin payment flows, on-chain foreign exchange (FX), and atomic swaps. Mastercard, Worldpay, and Western Union were cited as early reference points for potential adoption pathways.

Traditional payments incumbents have also been testing real settlement flows. Visa (V) has previously piloted USDC settlement using Solana and Ethereum, and worked with Worldpay and Nuvei to move USDC between partners in transactions described as totaling millions of dollars. More recently, on June 22, 2026 UTC, MoneyGram joined as an SDP infrastructure partner and became an active validator on the Solana network, according to the report.

Several implementations mentioned in the report underscore the direction of travel. Western Union introduced a Solana-based dollar settlement stablecoin called USDPT, while Worldpay—through participation in the Global Dollar Network—outlined a structure enabling merchant settlement in USDG on Solana. The message from these initiatives is consistent: Solana is increasingly being pitched as plumbing for ‘money movement,’ not a stage for viral token cycles.

RWA expansion is another key pillar. BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund BUIDL launched a Solana share class via Securitize, with assets under management surpassing $1 billion at the time of the announcement. Securitize cited speed, throughput, and cost efficiency as reasons for expanding to Solana, a move Exilist interpreted as further evidence the network is being evaluated as part of future financial infrastructure rather than solely as a retail trading venue.

In South Korea, similar institutional exploration is emerging. Toss Bank signed an MOU with the Solana Foundation on June 19, 2026 UTC to pursue a proof of concept for overseas remittances using Solana-based stablecoins. Shinhan Card announced cooperation with the Solana Foundation in April 2026 around stablecoin payment technology and broader Web3 payments initiatives. KG Inicis also signed an MOU on June 22, 2026 UTC to develop a global digital asset payments model and is reviewing the feasibility of incorporating stablecoins as an online payment method.

Why the institutional market now? Exilist’s answer centered on the ‘quality of money.’ Memecoin traffic can be explosive but typically lacks persistence, requiring constant replenishment of speculative demand. Payments and remittances, by contrast, are repetitive and structural: card networks, banks, payment gateways, and remittance firms settle and transfer value every day, with clear incentives to reduce costs and streamline operations. In that environment, Solana’s low fees, fast settlement, and high throughput could become defensible advantages as a stablecoin payments rail.

Even so, Exilist warned against assuming Solana can dominate the institutional landscape. For highly regulated markets—such as securities issuance, government bond tokenization, large fund shares, and collateral management—legal finality and conservative risk frameworks tend to favor Ethereum and other institution-oriented networks. The competitive field is also sharpening: Ethereum continues to position itself as a neutral, security-forward settlement layer; Circle’s Arc is marketed as a stablecoin-finance-focused layer-1 with predictable fees, embedded FX, and sub-second finality; Canton Network targets regulated capital markets infrastructure; and Avalanche (AVAX) emphasizes permissioned configurations and customizable design.

The report also highlighted lingering concerns about operational reliability. Solana’s mainnet beta suffered a disruption in February 2024 that halted block finality for roughly five hours. While Exilist cited figures indicating 100% uptime for mainnet beta and RPC nodes over the most recent 90 days as of June 26, 2026 UTC, it argued institutions often weigh historical incidents and incident-response accountability structures as heavily as current performance. In that sense, chain speed alone is insufficient; platforms like SDP must be complemented by custody partners, compliance tooling, and integrated issuance and payment modules.

Exilist ultimately described Solana’s realistic positioning not as the chain that will hold “all institutional money,” but as the chain that can process ‘fast institutional money’—remittances, merchant settlement, stablecoin checkout, frequent small payments, on-chain FX, and tokenized rewards. The report noted that many of the named partners—including Toss Bank, KG Inicis, Worldpay, Western Union, and MoneyGram—share a common business DNA: they specialize in moving money efficiently.

Still, the key open question is whether institutional adoption meaningfully accrues to SOL. Exilist pointed to a mismatch in value capture: DeFiLlama data cited in the report showed Solana 24-hour app revenue at about $2.86 million, while chain revenue was roughly $50,700. App fees were around $5.96 million versus chain fees of roughly $381,900, suggesting a large share of economics remains with applications and infrastructure partners rather than directly accruing to the base layer. In other words, Solana’s core advantage—cheap execution—can become a disadvantage for token value capture.

There is also a visibility problem. In institutional payment flows, end users may never feel like they are “using Solana.” They use a bank app, complete checkout through a payment gateway interface, or receive settlement through an acquirer—while the blockchain remains an invisible backend. If so, customer relationships are more likely to be owned by banks, payment processors, stablecoin issuers, and custodians, leaving Solana as a low-cost execution layer rather than a brand-facing network.

To assess Solana’s next phase, Exilist said investors and analysts should focus on three metrics: whether institutional payment and remittance traffic translates into real mainnet transactions; whether that traffic connects meaningfully to SOL fees, MEV, staking demand, and ecosystem liquidity; and whether Solana-native applications can capture customer relationships rather than ceding them to intermediaries. The report concluded that the question “Will institutions use Solana?” is already being partially answered—while the more consequential question is what Solana (SOL) captures when they do.