How much do Solana validators earn?
Over the past week, validators collected roughly 5,962 SOL a day in transaction fees, 1,781 SOL in issuance commission and 157 SOL in Jito commission — network-wide, before hardware and vote costs. Since August 2023 the running total is 10.33M SOL.
Transaction fees and Jito tips track network demand, and their weight in the total moves with it. Their combined share of operator income has ranged from 18.6% to 88.9% by month. Issuance commission moves slowly by design, so as its share shrinks an operator's income turns into a bet on how busy the chain is rather than on the inflation schedule.
Issuance commission, MEV and transaction fees
Issuance commission is the validator's percentage cut of the staking rewards Solana mints each epoch. Jito commission is its cut of the MEV tips searchers pay to have transactions bundled and landed. Transaction fees are the fees inside the blocks the validator produces as leader — priority fees (which now go entirely to validators), base fees and vote fees. Self-staked operators charging 90% commission or more are counted only on their fees, since economically they are token holders staking to themselves rather than serving delegators.
Why it matters if you stake SOL
If you delegate SOL, the commission slice of this chart comes out of your staking rewards. The live validator ranking compares operators on commission and uptime; the staking calculator shows what the difference is worth on a real position.
Put the numbers to work
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FAQ
What is Solana validator operator revenue?
The SOL validators keep for themselves, before running costs, from three sources: commission on SOL issuance (staking inflation), commission on MEV tips, and the transaction fees in the blocks they produce — priority, base and vote fees. It excludes the rewards passed through to delegators, which are staker revenue.
How is validator operator revenue different from staking rewards?
Operator revenue is what the validator keeps; staking rewards are what you, the delegator, receive. The two come from the same issuance and MEV, split by the validator's commission: a 5% commission means the operator keeps 5% of your inflation rewards and passes 95% to you. A 0% validator keeps none of it, which is why commission is the single number that decides your yield.
What is MEV commission?
MEV searchers pay tips through Jito to get their transaction bundles included in blocks. Those tips are shared between the validator and its delegators, and the validator's cut, set by its own MEV commission rate, is the purple slice of this chart. Validators holding over 95% of Solana stake earn from that auction, so tips are now a standard part of validator income.
How much does a Solana validator make?
It depends on how much stake it attracts and how busy the network is. The chart shows the network-wide total; an individual validator's share scales with its stake weight, since stake decides how often it is selected as leader and how much commission it collects. Transaction fees and Jito tips swing the most day to day; issuance commission moves slowly as the inflation schedule tapers.
Is running a Solana validator profitable?
Only above a certain size. Voting costs roughly 1 SOL per day (over 350 SOL a year) before servers and bandwidth, so a validator needs enough delegated stake for its commission, block fees and MEV cut to clear those costs — commonly estimated at tens of thousands of SOL in delegation. Below that, operators run at a loss or rely on programs like the Solana Foundation Delegation Program.
Do validators keep all of this revenue?
No. Vote transactions alone cost a validator about one SOL a day, and servers and bandwidth come on top of that, so operator revenue is gross, not profit. The commission portion also comes out of your staking rewards.
Where does this data come from?
Three on-chain sources feed it: the issuance commission credited to vote accounts, the transaction fees paid to block leaders, and the MEV tips. They are summed network-wide each day and denominated in SOL.