How Solana and Hyperliquid Led Blockchain Revenue in 2025 Despite Market Challenges
In 2025, Solana and Hyperliquid emerged as the leading blockchain platforms by revenue generation, a notable development amid broader market volatility and declining traditional metrics like Total Value Locked (TVL). Their focus on transaction execution efficiency rather than conventional indicators marks a shift in how blockchain success and sustainability are measured.
What happened
Throughout 2025, both Solana and Hyperliquid outperformed other blockchain platforms in revenue generation despite a challenging market environment. According to reports, these two platforms prioritized transaction execution efficiency over traditional metrics such as TVL or market sentiment, which have historically dominated narratives around blockchain success.
Solana’s ability to sustain high transaction volumes and revenue was largely attributed to its high throughput capacity and low transaction fees. This operational efficiency was confirmed by the Solana Foundation’s Q1 2025 disclosures. Meanwhile, Hyperliquid’s revenue leadership was driven by its innovative derivatives and perpetual swap products, which maintained consistent trading volumes, as detailed in Hyperliquid’s official Q1 2025 financial disclosure.
Market-wide data from sources such as DeFiLlama and CoinGecko corroborate that TVL across the blockchain sector either declined or stagnated in 2025, reflecting investor caution and volatility. Despite this, Solana and Hyperliquid were able to maintain or even grow their transaction execution metrics, indicating a decoupling of revenue performance from traditional valuation and locked capital measures.
Industry analysis, including that from AmbCrypto and The Block Research, interprets this as a shift toward revenue models focused on real usage and transaction fees rather than speculative growth or TVL accumulation. However, some commentary from Messari research suggests that while transaction execution is critical, long-term ecosystem resilience may still depend on broader adoption and TVL to support network effects and security incentives.
Why this matters
The performance of Solana and Hyperliquid in 2025 challenges prevailing assumptions about blockchain success, which have often prioritized TVL and market sentiment as primary indicators. By demonstrating that transaction execution efficiency can sustain and even grow revenue amid market downturns, these platforms highlight a potential redefinition of success metrics in the blockchain industry.
This focus on transaction execution over TVL suggests a move toward service-oriented and usage-based revenue models, which may offer greater stability in volatile market conditions. Such a shift could influence how blockchain networks prioritize development, potentially emphasizing scalability, transaction cost efficiency, and product innovation (such as derivatives) over capital lock-in strategies.
From a market structure perspective, this evolution may encourage other blockchain ecosystems to reassess their growth strategies and revenue models, particularly in light of regulatory uncertainties and investor caution. The emphasis on transaction execution could also impact developer engagement and third-party integrations, as sustainable revenue streams may depend more heavily on active usage than on speculative capital.
What remains unclear
Despite these insights, several important questions remain unresolved. The scalability of transaction-execution-focused revenue models across different blockchain types and use cases is not yet clear. It is unknown how well this approach would perform in networks with distinct consensus mechanisms or user bases.
The role of developer ecosystems and third-party integrations in sustaining transaction volumes independent of TVL is also not fully understood. Moreover, the available data does not clarify how regulatory changes or macroeconomic factors have influenced Solana’s and Hyperliquid’s revenue streams specifically in 2025.
Detailed, independently audited financial statements for both Solana and Hyperliquid are limited or unavailable, restricting deeper analysis of revenue breakdowns across fees, derivatives, staking, or other sources. Additionally, there is a lack of longitudinal data to determine whether the observed 2025 trend reflects a sustainable structural shift or a temporary anomaly.
Finally, the implications for user retention, network security, and ecosystem resilience tied to deprioritizing TVL remain ambiguous. While transaction execution can drive revenue, TVL has historically played a role in securing networks and incentivizing participation, raising questions about the long-term health of this emerging model.
What to watch next
- Disclosures of more detailed, independently audited financial statements from Solana and Hyperliquid that clarify revenue composition and sustainability.
- Data on developer activity and third-party integration growth across these platforms to assess ecosystem support for transaction-driven models.
- Monitoring regulatory developments that could affect derivatives trading and transaction fee structures, particularly for platforms like Hyperliquid.
- Longitudinal analysis of transaction execution metrics and revenue trends in 2026 and beyond to evaluate persistence of the 2025 pattern.
- Research on network security and user retention metrics to understand the broader impact of deprioritizing TVL in blockchain ecosystems.
While Solana and Hyperliquid’s 2025 revenue leadership signals an important shift toward transaction execution as a core success metric, substantial uncertainties remain. The long-term implications for blockchain business models, ecosystem resilience, and market structure will depend on how these platforms and others navigate scalability, regulatory challenges, and evolving user behaviors.
Source: https://ambcrypto.com/solana-and-hyperliquid-dominate-2025-chain-revenue/. This article is based on verified research material available at the time of writing. Where information is limited or unavailable, this is stated explicitly.