Solana’s Power Play: Why One Chain Chose to Fight Back Against Application Dominance-2

KEYTAKEAWAYS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• KEY TAKEAWAYS
• THE ALPENGLOW GAMBIT
• THE BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN
• THE SHOPPING MALL ANALOGY
• WHAT THIS MEANS FOR 2026 AND BEYOND
• DISCLAIMER
• WRITER’S INTRO

CONTENT

 Solana fights back against application dominance through aggressive fee restructuring and the Alpenglow upgrade, pursuing a Nasdaq-like value capture model for 2026.

While Ethereum’s response to application-layer revenue dominance leans toward philosophical acceptance and infrastructure refinement, Solana has charted an entirely different course. Anatoly Yakovenko’s vision for Solana couldn’t be more distinct from Vitalik’s approach, and understanding this divergence reveals why these two major chains might be headed toward fundamentally different futures.

Anatoly has been explicit about his belief that a blockchain should function like Nasdaq—not just fast, but actively capturing value from every transaction that occurs on it. This philosophy rejects the idea of pushing applications toward Layer 2 solutions. Instead, Solana insists that all business should happen on the mainnet, ensuring that every successful transaction directly translates into demand for SOL and fee capture for the network. Even though Solana’s application revenue currently exceeds its mainnet revenue, the team began preparing a counteroffensive in 2025 to reclaim value that had drifted toward the application layer.

The first move came in early 2025 when Solana adjusted its priority fee distribution model. Previously, the network burned 50% of priority fees and allocated the other 50% to validators. Under the new structure, 100% of priority fees now flow to validators. Shortly afterward, Solana implemented programmatic mechanisms to automatically distribute these recaptured priority fees to SOL stakers. This wasn’t just a minor technical adjustment but a strategic repositioning of how value flows through the network.

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THE ALPENGLOW GAMBIT

Now in 2026, Solana is preparing the Alpenglow upgrade, which aims to achieve 100-millisecond settlement speeds. The logic here is straightforward yet powerful: higher performance means greater application dependence on the chain, which in turn means the “chain tax” becomes easier to collect. Applications simply can’t afford to leave when the infrastructure they rely on becomes too superior to replicate elsewhere. This strategy essentially forces applications to keep feeding revenue back to SOL, whether they like it or not.

What enables Solana to pursue this aggressive value recapture strategy? The answer lies in architectural choices that differ fundamentally from Ethereum’s design. Every application on Solana operates on the same ledger. The network maintains a philosophy of “mainnet as execution layer,” meaning there’s no meaningful Layer 2 concept despite some sidechains existing at the margins. All transactions, slippage, and MEV extraction happen directly on the mainnet. For applications requiring AI-powered payments or high-frequency transactions, this represents a fatal attraction. Ethereum’s proliferation of Layer 2s and sidechains introduces cross-chain friction that becomes genuinely painful for certain use cases.

This architectural difference creates a fascinating contrast in how the two networks approach power and value distribution. Ethereum’s ecosystem has become decentralized across various applications and Layer 2s, with value capture remaining passive—essentially waiting for applications to give back through burns or other mechanisms. The network’s core advantage lies in its uncompromising security and censorship resistance. Solana, conversely, maintains power highly concentrated in Layer 1 validator nodes, with value capture being active and protocol-enforced through direct priority fee allocation. Its competitive edge comes from extreme composability and transaction speed. As we move through 2026, Ethereum struggles with an identity crisis while searching for new narratives, whereas Solana pursues what might be called “Nasdaq-ification” with an increasingly closed-loop business model.

THE BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN

Galaxy Digital’s price predictions for SOL emerge from this strategic positioning, though reclaiming value from the application layer in 2026 will inevitably trigger adversarial game theory dynamics. We’ve already seen hints of this tension with platforms like Jito. The central question becomes: if Solana successfully recaptures revenue, will it squeeze value out of applications running on the network? 

Understanding where this battle gets won or lost requires examining specific pressure points.

Liquidity stickiness represents the first critical dimension. Can “atomic composability” survive if applications decide to migrate? Here, the chain likely holds the advantage. If application migration breaks the ability to interlock with other DApps in real-time, applications will hesitate before making the jump. The technical debt of rebuilding those integrations elsewhere becomes prohibitively expensive. However, user ownership tells a different story. Are users coming for “Jupiter” or for “Solana”? As native applications like Jupiter Mobile V3 gain traction, if users identify primarily with application entry points rather than the underlying chain, applications gain negotiating leverage to demand lower fees from the infrastructure layer.

The numbers from 2025 illustrate why this matters so much. Solana’s annual on-chain fee revenue exceeded $600 million, with some institutional estimates putting total revenue at $1.4 billion. Crucially, application revenue and chain revenue maintain high correlation on Solana because the network succeeds at keeping business within the “single shard” of its mainnet. Yet it’s essential to understand that Solana’s value recapture efforts won’t change Galaxy’s prediction that the ratio of application income to network income will double by 2026.

THE SHOPPING MALL ANALOGY

Think of the current dynamic this way: the cake is getting bigger, not being redistributed. Solana functions as the shopping mall, while applications serve as individual stores. The mall has essentially announced: “All queuing fees from customers rushing into stores now belong entirely to mall management.” A store like Jupiter might get taxed on this “queue revenue,” but early 2026 data shows that Solana applications still generate roughly 3.5 times the revenue that the mainnet captures. Even after Solana implements its fee recapture mechanisms, applications continue to thrive because the overall pie keeps expanding.

This creates a peculiar equilibrium where both sides can claim victory. Solana increases its take from each transaction while applications simultaneously grow their absolute revenue through ecosystem expansion and user growth. The mall gets richer from its cut, but successful stores still make more money than ever because foot traffic keeps increasing. Whether this balance proves sustainable depends largely on whether Solana can keep attracting applications despite higher extraction rates, and whether applications can maintain their growth trajectories even as they surrender a larger percentage to the chain.

The broader implications extend beyond just Solana and Ethereum. This divergence between infrastructure philosophies might actually benefit the industry by creating genuine differentiation rather than convergence. Ethereum positions itself as the immutable, censorship-resistant base layer where security trumps all other concerns, potentially appealing to applications that prioritize these characteristics over raw performance. Solana brands itself as the high-performance business platform where speed and capital efficiency matter most, attracting applications where user experience and transaction costs determine competitive outcomes.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR 2026 AND BEYOND

Looking ahead, the question isn’t whether applications will continue outearning chains—that seems inevitable given the maturation of the blockchain application layer. Rather, the question is which model proves more sustainable: Ethereum’s acceptance of lower direct revenue in exchange for ecosystem dominance, or Solana’s aggressive recapture of value from applications that depend on its unique performance characteristics.

Neither approach is obviously correct, and the market will likely support both models serving different niches. Projects requiring maximum decentralization and security will gravitate toward Ethereum despite higher costs and lower speeds. Applications where milliseconds matter and user experience determines survival will choose Solana despite surrendering more revenue to the chain. The real winners might be users and developers who benefit from having genuine alternatives rather than a monoculture.

What we’re witnessing isn’t just a technical disagreement about blockchain architecture but a fundamental debate about what public infrastructure should be. Should it extract maximum value from its users and applications, using that revenue to further improve itself and reward stakeholders? Or should it minimize extraction, focusing instead on being the most neutral, accessible foundation possible? Both Ethereum and Solana are placing billion-dollar bets on their respective answers, and 2026 will provide crucial evidence about which philosophy resonates more deeply with the market.

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