Solana’s verified[…] Send it directly to 0.”
The data used in the ‘sh*tpost’ appears to go back to a snapshot of April 2024, as the FDV figure was wrong. Current CryptoSlate Data shows that Starknet’s fully diluted valuation is around $900 million, not $15 billion.
While exceeding the rating is one thing, the fact is that Solana’s official account urged users to ‘send’ [Starknet] straight to 0” really shows where the industry is in 2026. A project looking for serious institutional money to move forward is actively calling for the demise of a competing chain (albeit via an ‘internally’ controlled social media account).
Yet the broader question remains: how do you measure the gap between what a network is worth and what it actually does?
Rating is not a usage, but some networks price as if they have both.
The real challenge lies in separating what is easy to inflate, such as fictitious perpetual futures volume and address activity, from what is harder to fake: fee pressure measured through REV (Real Economic Value), which combines chain fees and MEV tips that users actually pay for execution priority.
The metric stack that matters
The market capitalization is divided by the circulating supply, while the FDV is divided by the total supply.
Activity metrics are broken down into spot DEX volume which measures on-chain swaps and perpetual futures volume, which DefiLlama defines as notional traded volume, including leverage.
A trader who opens a $100,000 position with $10,000 margin counts the entire $100,000 toward volume, making perp numbers large by design and vulnerable to inflation from zero-cost trading or points programs that reward activity regardless of real demand.
REV cuts through this noise by measuring what users actually pay to use a chain.
DefiLlama defines it as chain fees plus MEV tips. High volume with low ROE reveals a fictitious churn caused by incentives rather than organic economic activity.
Using data from mid-January 2026, we retrieved the 30-day spot DEX volume and 30-day perp volume for the top 50 blockchain infrastructures ranked by market capitalization on CoinGecko.
Solana shows $121.8 billion in cash payments and $32.4 billion in perpetrator payments, a total of $154.2 billion in combined trading activity at an FDV of $90.7 billion for a ratio of 0.59.
The network’s speculative value is about half of a month’s trading activity, and its volume is spread across dozens of DEXs, including Jupiter, Raydium and Orca, while its daily ROE consistently exceeds $1 million, with millions of active addresses processing millions of trades.
Arbitrum shows $15 billion in mockery and $37.8 billion in perpetrators, a total of $52.8 billion at an FDV of $2.2 billion for a ratio of 0.04.
That looks attractive until you check the concentration: Variational, a single perpetual exchange, accounts for $24.9 billion of that perp volume, representing about 66% of the chain’s perpetual trading.
Variational launched a points program on December 17, with documentation showing that the VAR token is not yet live and that approximately 50% of the supply is for community distribution.
That’s textbook “mercenary volume,” where traders stack points prior to a token’s launch and can reassess them once the rewards end. This means that Arbitrum’s monthly volume could drop by $20 billion if Variational’s activity normalizes after the airdrop. However, spot DEX volume and $3 billion TVL would remain intact.
Starknet tells an even starker story with $208 million in cash, but $36.4 billion in perpetrators. a total of $36.6 billion at an FDV of $900 million for a ratio of 0.025.
Extensive, a single perpetual exchange, is responsible for virtually all of Starknet’s perp volume in near-total dominance while running an ongoing points program launched in April 2025 with weekly payouts, referral incentives, and compensation discounts tied to volume.
The real signal comes from Starknet’s 30-day chain fees which DefiLlama puts at around $186,293, a small figure relative to the $36.4 billion in monthly notional perp volume that shows high notional activity without corresponding rate pressure, driven by incentives rather than real economic demand.
Optimism shows $8.2 billion in cash payments and $6.5 billion in perpetrators, a total of $14.7 billionat an FDV of $8 billion, for a ratio of 0.54, with volume spread across multiple locations rather than concentrated in a few incentivized protocols.
Both Optimism and Arbitrum post meaningful daily ROE that is typically above $500,000 and often tops $1 million during periods of high activity. This shows that users are paying for blockspace and execution priority beyond just farming points.
Avalanche shows $4.1 billion on the ground with minimal perpetrators at an FDV of $12 billion for a ratio of approximately 3x. By comparison, Polkadot shows a combined market cap of less than $1 billion versus an FDV of around $10 billion, for a ratio of more than 10x.
Additionally, Algorand has an FDV of nearly $8 billion, with minimal activity, resulting in ratios in the double digits as networks are priced for ecosystems that have not scaled or whose use has migrated elsewhere.
Low ratios indicate sustainability questions, not guarantees
A low FDV volume ratio does not automatically indicate undervaluation or buying opportunities, but rather poses a sustainability question: either valuation increases as volume proves sticky and quantifiable, or volume returns as incentives fade and mercenary capital moves on.
The answer depends on whether the activity is organic or driven by incentives and whether it is concentrated or spread across multiple locations and use cases.
Arbitrum’s 0.04 ratio changes fundamentally if more than 60% of the perp volume associated with a pre-token points program disappears after Variational’s airdrop. However, this wouldn’t necessarily hurt the broader ecosystem given the substantial spot DEX volume and TVL of over $3 billion.
Starknet’s 0.025 ratio represents an even sterner test, given Extended’s complete dominance and explicit agricultural incentives with weekly distributions.
Whether volume continues after points season ends will determine whether the ratio reflects real opportunity or a temporary distortion that collapses when incentives stop flowing, especially given the market cap of approximately $454 million with only 50.43% of the supply unlocked.
Solana’s 0.59 ratio is higher, but reflects volume spread across dozens of locations, with daily ROE consistently exceeding that of most layer 2 blockchains, indicating sustained organic demand across multiple product categories rather than dependence on a single incentivized protocol.
REV provides the clearest signal to separate actual demand from churn. If a chain books $50 billion in monthly volume but collects $10,000 in daily fees, volume drives points accumulation rather than economic demand. Networks that generate revenue, on the other hand, show this in compensation data that scales with activity levels.
Concentration serves as an important indicator for the future, because when more than 50% of a chain’s volume is connected to a single location, that is the cycle of a single protocol and not broad ecosystem adoption.
When that protocol’s incentives end, or users migrate to a better implementation elsewhere, the volume metrics quickly compress. Points programs create short-term increases that distort metrics for months until the real test arrives after the token launch, when farmers reassess execution quality and compensation structure without additional incentives.
Solana shows healthier patterns where volume is spread across the major DEXs and offender activity is spread across multiple locations, indicating true product-market fit.
Cosmos (ATOM) presents a structural advantage with an FDV of almost $4 billion, but ecosystem activity takes place on app chains such as Osmosis and dYdX rather than on the hub itself.
This means that low DEX and perp volumes do not provide real utility focused on cross-chain communications and shared security infrastructure, where token value comes from coordination rather than direct trade throughput.
Solana’s tweet was theater with demonstrably wrong numbers, but the question it raised about when valuation reflects what networks do and what they might do remains worth exploring systematically.
DEX volume, perp volume, REV, and location concentration provide quantifiable signals that separate networks priced for current traffic from networks priced for traffic they are waiting for or traffic that could disappear completely if points stop flowing.
