Why Solana’s Fattest Fees Don’t Burn a Single Lamport

Max Wadington, a Fidelity Digital Assets senior research analyst, argued in a Nov. 6 report that Solana’s perpetual-futures exchanges processed more than $590 billion in notional volume over 12 months, with priority fees and Jito tips providing most network revenue as on-chain trading peaked in 2024–2025. Wadington said the network’s revenue model depends on traders paying to influence transaction sequencing, not limited block capacity, putting Solana at roughly 15% of all exchange trades through 2026 and noting it briefly overtook the New York Stock Exchange in weekly trades. Validators collect priority fees in full; only the 5,000-lamport base fee per signature is half burned. JIP-25 paused JitoSOL’s 50% priority-fee sharing rule, and unstaked SOL gets no fee share.