Solana processed approximately 3.38 billion successful non-vote transactions in October, extending a sustained increase in application-level activity across the network. According to Blockworks Research’s October Solana data, the monthly total was about 6% above September and 81% higher year over year, while the network averaged roughly 109 million completed transactions per day. October marked a fourth consecutive monthly record and a sixth straight month of growth in successful non-vote activity.
The metric deliberately excludes validator votes and transactions that failed to complete, making it narrower than Solana’s headline transaction count. September had already produced 3.18 billion completed non-vote transactions, up from 2.93 billion in August, according to the Solana Foundation. The series measures completed application activity, although it still includes automated systems and bots alongside human users.
Solana Activity Extends Earlier Transaction Records
The October milestone extends a trend that was already visible during the summer. Solana previously set a weekly non-vote transaction record of 1.318 billion during August 17 to 23. That earlier figure included unsuccessful transactions, however, whereas the latest monthly dataset focuses specifically on successful execution. Keeping those methodologies separate is essential when comparing record activity across different reporting windows.
Infrastructure changes have expanded the network’s available execution capacity during the same period. Solana reduced its target slot time from 400 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds and increased block compute limits, giving validators more room to process application workloads. The subsequent Alpenglow mainnet consensus handoff on October 21 also moved validator voting away from ordinary onchain vote transactions. Those upgrades increase or reorganize network capacity, but they do not establish that any one protocol change caused October’s transaction record.
Application demand provides a separate part of the picture. Solana recently accounted for approximately 38% of tracked weekly spot DEX volume, while stablecoin transfers, payments and tokenized assets are also generating transaction activity. High transaction counts nevertheless cannot be converted directly into unique users, capital inflows or economic value, particularly on a network where automated trading strategies can generate large numbers of instructions.
Onchain Growth Contrasts With Recent ETF Outflows
Network activity has remained elevated while regulated SOL investment products experienced a weaker short-term flow window. U.S. spot Solana ETFs recorded approximately $63.4 million in combined net outflows across five trading sessions through November 2, with the latest session itself showing no net flow. The ETF data measures creations and redemptions in investment products, while transaction counts measure activity taking place on the blockchain, so the two datasets should not be treated as opposing measures of the same demand.
Solana’s financial-market infrastructure is also expanding independently of those fund flows. Bullish and Equiniti demonstrated the transfer of 61 million reserved tokenized BLSH shares on Solana at the New York Stock Exchange on October 27. Bullish subsequently named Solana, Aptos and Ethereum as the initial networks for its issuer-sponsored tokenization services, while the official ownership record remains with the transfer agent. The 61 million-share transaction demonstrates a specific tokenization workflow on Solana, not 61 million shares of new capital entering the network.
That activity joins a broader expansion in tokenized financial assets, with Solana reporting 1.5 million addresses holding tokenized equities. Those addresses, like transaction counts, cannot be equated one-for-one with individual investors. The stronger signal is that multiple categories of application activity are expanding simultaneously, while each metric still requires its own definition and limitations.
October’s 3.38 billion completed non-vote transactions therefore provide a clear network-level record without establishing an equivalent record in users, liquidity or capital. What the data demonstrates directly is sustained growth in successfully executed application traffic, extending a monthly expansion that has continued since May despite weaker recent ETF flows.