Jacob Creech, Vice President of Technology at Solana Foundation, recently detailed how Solana has actively built and earned public trust through a strategy of transparency and resilience. His article, published on TheStreet Crypto on September 14, 2026, emphasizes the network’s journey since its 2020 launch.
This approach mirrors how established internet, cloud, and financial infrastructures have gained confidence over time. Solana has encountered and learned from numerous challenges, using each incident to enhance its foundational technology and operational robustness.
Solana’s transparency builds public trust
Earning trust in a public blockchain environment means being upfront about operational failures and swiftly implementing fixes. Solana embraces this philosophy, focusing on public disclosures and rapid diagnoses of issues.
Early network issues, particularly with bot-driven transactions, led to significant improvements. The team increased validator connection capacity and introduced stake-weighted quality of service (SWQoS) to manage traffic more effectively.
Network resilience proves platform stability
Solana’s operational resilience has faced stern tests, demonstrating its capacity to absorb significant shocks. A notable incident on August 12, 2026, saw a routing failure at its largest infrastructure provider.
This event took nearly 29% of the network’s stake offline, yet blocks continued to be produced, and transactions landed seamlessly. The infrastructure provider fully recovered in just over 30 minutes, showcasing the network’s inherent redundancy. For a deeper look at how the network has adapted, consider Solana’s early network challenges.
The network has maintained 100% uptime since February 2024, a testament to these ongoing improvements. Solana processes more daily transactions than all other major blockchains combined and frequently achieves record-breaking single-day volumes.
The network also recently hit its first-ever 5,000 sustained user transactions per second (TPS) following the TeraSwitch incident.
Speed and cost enhancements
Solana has consistently pushed for higher speeds and lower costs. Slot times have been reduced to 300 milliseconds, with a target of 200 milliseconds in sight.
The upcoming Alpenglow mainnet release is expected to bring transaction finality down to an impressive 150 milliseconds. Storage costs, or rent, have also seen a substantial 90% reduction.
Moreover, the network now supports larger transactions, enabling more extensive proofs and enhancing user privacy. These advancements solidify Solana’s position as one of the fastest and most used blockchains.
Expanding ecosystem drives real-world adoption
The Solana ecosystem is attracting significant capital and enterprise interest, particularly in real-world assets (RWAs). Over $17.5 billion in stablecoins now rely on Solana, alongside more than $4 billion in total RWAs.
As of late July 2026, the network hosts $3.7 billion in non-stablecoin real-world asset value across 313,000 holders. This includes tokenized Treasuries, public equities, private credit, and even sovereign debt, highlighting the breadth of real-world asset tokenization.
Major institutions are actively building on Solana. Western Union, Franklin Templeton, MoneyGram, SoFi, and BlackRock are among the prominent names leveraging the platform. J.P. Morgan has already arranged commercial paper transactions on the network.
BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, accessible through Securitize, notably holds over $600 million on Solana. Companies like Apollo, Hamilton Lane, VanEck, and WisdomTree also have live deployments or announced tokenization initiatives.
Tokenized assets and ETFs
Solana’s tokenized stock market continues to grow. xStocks, launched in June 2025, offers over 100 tokenized U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs as SPL tokens. It commanded a total value of $442 million on Solana by late July 2026, securing over 67% market share.
In March 2026, xStocks announced a framework to connect Nasdaq’s tokenized equity markets directly with Solana DeFi. Ondo Global Markets followed suit in January 2026, launching with 200+ tokenized U.S. stocks and later expanding to over 250.
The institutional interest extends to exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL), which launched on NYSE Arca in October 2025, now boasts approximately $600 million in assets under management (AUM). Fidelity’s Solana Fund (FSOL) is the second-largest U.S. product, with around $125 million in AUM, showcasing significant ETF inflows into the Solana ecosystem.
Robust security and privacy initiatives
To further solidify enterprise confidence, Solana has launched several critical security initiatives. Earlier this year, the Solana Foundation and Asymmetric Research introduced STRIDE (Solana Trust, Resilience and Infrastructure for DeFi Enterprises).
This comprehensive security program offers independent evaluations, public findings, and ongoing operational security (OPSEC) for qualifying DeFi protocols. Protocols with over $10 million in total value locked (TVL) that pass evaluation receive Solana Foundation-funded threat monitoring.
The Solana Incident Response Network (SIRN), a dedicated collective of security firms like Asymmetric, OtterSec, and Neodyme, provides real-time crisis response. This network is available to all Solana-based protocols, with access prioritized by TVL. Additional tools include Hypernative’s ecosystem-wide threat detection and Range Security’s real-time risk alerting.
Enterprise privacy solutions
A March 2026 report from the Solana Foundation outlined a “full-spectrum” approach to privacy for enterprises. This framework aims to provide companies with granular control over information disclosure, moving beyond mere transparency.
The model explores various privacy levels, including pseudonymity, confidentiality, and anonymity, leveraging techniques like zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) for fully private models. Crucially, Solana frames privacy as compatible with regulatory compliance.
Features like “auditor keys” allow authorized parties to access transaction details when legally required. Mechanisms also enable wallets to prove compliance without revealing sensitive personal data. Solana’s high throughput and low latency make these sophisticated privacy tools practical for real-world enterprise applications.
Sustaining validator independence
The Solana Foundation Delegation Program (SFDP), launched in November 2020, initially bootstrapped early network validation. However, the program has since evolved to reduce reliance on the Foundation.
Its goal is to support economically independent validators as network participation and third-party delegation have expanded significantly. Non-SFDP stake has seen remarkable growth, increasing approximately 230% since the program’s inception.