Record-breaking staking rewards are here on Solana. As of Epoch 701 (November 24th-26th, 2024), Figment’s validators are at an 11.78% staking reward rate (SRR) for SOL, with Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) rewards at all-time highs.
Source: 21co / Solana: Estimated Staking APY by Epoch, MEV Rewards in Grey
This surge in rewards isn’t just a temporary spike – it’s the result of fundamental growth in Solana’s ecosystem, with high transaction volumes leading to MEV profit opportunities.
In this article, we’ll break down what’s driving these historic reward rates, explain where these returns are coming from, and detail how Figment’s infrastructure optimizations help our delegators earn more Solana rewards than ever before.
Understanding Solana’s Reward Structure for Delegators
As a quick primer, there are two main sources of rewards for Solana delegators: Protocol Inflation Rewards and Execution Rewards. Solana’s Inflation Schedule is currently 4.891% and decreases by 15% annually. Execution Rewards come from Maximum Extractible Value (MEV) and on-chain profit opportunities captured by searchers. Profit opportunities include atomic bundles, including arbitrages, liquidations, flash loans, etc. Validators running the Jito-Solana validator client receive “validator tips” from searchers to include their “transaction bundles” and capture profit opportunities. Please see the “Jito MEV” link here or at the end of the article for a detailed overview.
Record Growth: Solana’s MEV Ecosystem Drives Historic Returns
High user demand for blockspace on Solana opens up profit opportunities (MEV) for searchers. According to Defillama’s fee tracker, Solana and Jito fees are ~$400MM over the past 30 days. Real Economic Value on Solana (defined as transaction fees + MEV validator tips) are over $100MM/week according to @buffalu__ CEO/co-founder of Jito-Labs, using data from Blockworks Research.
Solana Real Economic Value per Blockworks Research
Solana Source of Real Economic Value per Blockworks Research
As a result, MEV on Solana is at all-time highs of ~3.5% of the 11.78% SSR (~30% of SRR) for delegators to Figment. This compares to 0.01% of SRR from exactly one year ago (0.13% of total rewards).
MEV is driving the all-time-highs in Total Staking Reward Rates on Solana. Dashboards from 21Shares and their researcher Tom Wan confirm this trend as seen in the 7 day moving average of Solana Total Staking Rewards below:
Credit: 21.co’s Solana Staking Dashboard
Users actively using Trading clients and launchpads such as pump.fun, Trojan, Photon and BonkBot are driving Solana’s Decentralized Exchange (DEX) volumes to >4-$9B/day according to DEX Screener. This is not an endorsement of any clients or launchpads mentioned. It is merely an observation of their effect on Solana daily transaction volume, blockspace demand, MEV uptick, and how they increased Figment’s delegators SRR to all-time-highs.
In summary, Solana delegators to Figment are receiving all-time-high Staking Rewards Rates due to:
- Increased transaction volume and blockspace demand from users on Solana
- Increased adoption of trading clients by Solana users
- Volume leading to MEV opportunities for searchers
- Validators like Figment receive “validator tips” for running Jito-Solana’s client
Why Stake with Figment: Leading the Solana MEV Revolution
Figment’s validators consistently generate high MEV rewards to our Solana Delegators, with an SRR of 11.78% in Epoch 701 (Nov 24th-26th). Through our early adoption of Jito-Solana and continued infrastructure optimization, we deliver more value than ever before for our stakers.
The data is clear: MEV rewards have grown from just 0.01% to 3.5% of total returns in one year. Figment believes Solana’s high transaction volume and MEV rewards will continue throughout the rest of the year as users trade digital assets using mobile or desktop trading clients.
Ready to optimize your Solana staking returns?
