Onchain App Revenue Posts Best Month of 2026 With Solana Leading the Pack

September saw onchain applications generate more revenue than any other month this year. Across the 356 chains tracked by DefiLlama, app revenue reached $467.66 million during the month, up around 27% from the previous month and the highest it’s been since October last year. 

Solana was the leader of the pack, accounting for $144.25 million, or roughly 31% of the total. Robinhood Chain came in second with $84.39 million after a breakout month, while Hyperliquid ($60.56 million) and Ethereum ($55.43 million) took third and fourth. Binance Smart Chain made the top five with $38.71 million. 

What Counts as App Revenue

Anybody who swaps tokens or opens a position on an onchain perps platform pays a fee for it. A portion of that fee usually goes to liquidity providers, and depending on the application, some of it may go to lenders or token creators. The remainder kept by the application after these payouts is counted as app revenue. 

DefiLlama omits a few categories. This includes stablecoin issuers, liquid staking protocols, as well as gas fees, which goes to the blockchain network and its validators instead of the application. 

What’s left is a pretty direct understanding on demand. Apps only collect this revenue when people actually use them and pay to do so. This makes app revenue a useful gauge of what users are willing to spend on onchain products, something Total Value Locked (TVL) and number of wallets can’t capture. 

Solana’s best month since January

Solana’s $144.25 million marks an eight-month high for the network, its strongest showing since January. The total is still well short of January 2025, when apps on Solana generated roughly $650 million at the height of the memecoin frenzy.

Launchpads and memecoin trading did most of the work in September. StonkFun, a launchpad that went live in late July, sat at the center of it. The platform lets creators pair new tokens with tokenized stocks, pre-IPO tokens or other crypto assets in place of SOL. In early September, StonkFun moved its launches onto Raydium’s LaunchLab bonding curves, routing that new activity through one of Solana’s largest trading venues.

Robinhood Chain nearly triples its monthly revenue

Robinhood Chain posted the most surprising number on the board. Apps on the network brought in around $30 million in each of July and August, so September’s $84.39 million came close to tripling the previous month’s total and put the chain ahead of both Hyperliquid and Ethereum.

Hyperliquid, where most revenue comes from perpetual futures trading, landed just ahead of Ethereum. Ethereum still holds more value locked than any other chain by a wide margin, yet it finished September in fourth place on app revenue.