Top Idea
In October, SOL fell 19.2% to $95.4 and SOL ETPs posted their weakest month on record with $160.1M of net outflows, yet REV slipped just 1.8% to $37.1M and app revenue held at $151.6M, down 11.8% but still the third-best month of 2026. The month’s defining event was Alpenglow, which replaced TowerBFT on October 21st, twelve days after slot times reached 200ms. Together, the two upgrades cut time to finality from 6.8s to roughly 430ms and took vote transactions off the ledger without denting non-vote activity. Usage kept its footing around them: Pump had its best revenue month in over a year at $58.1M and tokenized asset volumes came in at $4.2B. Heading into November, the network has rarely looked stronger while the bid for SOL remains weak, and whether price catches up depends on ETP flows stabilizing and the Binance hack fallout fading, as well as general macro conditions improving.
Key Details
SOL closed the month at $95.4, a 19.2% MoM decline from September’s $118.0 close. The month peaked early, at $121.5 on October 4th, before a risk-off week that saw US Bitcoin ETFs shed $485M on October 7th alone. SOL drifted to $104 by mid-month as a hotter-than-expected September CPI print pushed rate expectations higher. The Fed held at 3.75%-4.0% on October 28th, with two dissents in favor of another hike. The next day, Binance disclosed a hot-wallet exploit of roughly $6.3B, the largest crypto theft on record, and SOL fell 6.7% as liquidations across the market topped $1.5B in 24 hours.
On a relative basis, SOL underperformed across the board, with SOL/BTC falling 12.9%, SOL/ETH falling 3.7%, and SOL/HYPE falling 16.3%. BTC closed the month down 7.3% and ETH closed down 16.0%, while HYPE lost just 3.4%. HYPE benefited from a late month announcement by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the NYSE, indicating that they intend to bring Hyperliquid perps onshore through a partnership with HIP-3 deployer TradeXYZ.
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