Fidelity Digital Assets reported on November 6, 2026, that Solana’s decentralized exchanges averaged roughly 15 percent of the weekly trade counts recorded across major U.S. equity exchanges during 2026, up from 0.30 percent in 2022. The research note, titled “Solana’s Competitive Advantage in On-Chain Trading” by senior analyst Max Wadington, found that Solana briefly exceeded the New York Stock Exchange in weekly trades executed. The comparison counts the number of trades rather than dollar volume and pits Solana’s on-chain spot DEX activity against traditional venues that handle different instruments, rules and participants.
Fidelity described Solana as “an emerging piece of financial market infrastructure” while noting that network revenue remains closely tied to trading activity. Additional findings highlighted monthly tokenized-asset trading volume rising from under $100 million to nearly $5 billion, and more than $590 billion in perpetual-futures notional volume over the trailing twelve months. Solana publicly highlighted the figures on November 8.
The Drivers of the Current Situation
The main issue is the sharp expansion in Solana’s on-chain trade count relative to traditional U.S. equity exchanges when measured purely by number of executions. Fidelity’s data, drawn from Blockworks, show Solana averaging approximately 95.9 million weekly trades through late September 2026 against a combined 656.8 million across Nasdaq, NYSE, NYSE Arca, BATS and NYSE American. That ratio reached about 15 percent for the year and crossed the NYSE alone in at least one week.
Related factors shaped the finding. Solana’s weekly trade volume grew roughly 100-fold from 2022 levels while the traditional exchanges grew far more modestly. The network’s low latency, high throughput and expanding ecosystem of DEXs and tokenized products supported the surge. Only the November 6 Fidelity report, the 15 percent average share, the brief NYSE exceedance, the trade-count methodology (explicitly irrespective of size or dollar value), and the tokenized-volume and perpetuals figures are confirmed. Broader growth in on-chain activity and institutional interest in Solana as market infrastructure contributed to the constructive framing of the comparison.
Continued monitoring requires observation of subsequent weekly trade counts, dollar-volume trends, sustainability of the activity, and any further institutional research. Limited detail on exact peak weeks and the inherent differences between DEX and equity-market trades form a narrower path for precise equivalence claims. Fidelity and Solana ecosystem analysts remain the primary parties tracking residual effects. The situation is a data-driven milestone that underscores Solana’s rising share of execution activity while carefully qualifying the trade-count metric.
Impact and Broader Context
Questions about Solana’s role relative to traditional market infrastructure keep growing. The Fidelity findings create uncertainty about how durable the elevated trade counts will prove and about the network’s ability to convert high activity into sustained revenue and institutional adoption. They also elevate attention on the distinction between trade count and economic value when comparing on-chain and legacy venues. Traders, developers, institutional allocators and competing blockchains continue to assess the implications.
The issue drives debate on the maturation of on-chain trading venues. It raises questions about the limits of trade-count comparisons across fundamentally different market structures, the risks of activity concentrated in speculative or low-value trades, effects on near-term confidence in Solana’s infrastructure thesis, and competition among high-throughput networks for tokenized and perpetual markets. Coverage notes that Fidelity positioned Solana as emerging infrastructure while acknowledging that scale alone does not guarantee long-term success.
The November 6 report forced renewed focus on Solana’s competitive position in execution markets. The current data show how subsequent trade-volume trends, tokenized-asset growth, or additional institutional analyses will determine the lasting effect.
New research notes, updated on-chain metrics, or further comparisons with traditional venues will clarify the practical significance of the trade-count milestone.
This analysis uses Fidelity Digital Assets’ November 6 research note and contemporaneous reporting. Sustainability of the elevated activity levels and any shift toward dollar-volume leadership remain subject to market conditions and network performance.