How much do Solana validators earn?
Over the past week, validators collected roughly 5,521 SOL a day in transaction fees, 1,734 SOL in issuance commission and 273 SOL in Jito commission — network-wide, before hardware and vote costs. Since August 2023 the running total is 9.81M SOL.
The mix moves with the market. Transaction fees and Jito MEV tips track real network demand — they spiked hard through the memecoin runs of late 2024 and January 2025, then settled. Issuance commission barely moves day to day and drifts down slowly as Solana's inflation schedule tapers. Watching the mix, not just the total, tells you whether validators are being paid by users or by inflation.
Issuance commission, Jito 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 near-100% commission 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
The commission slice of this chart is money taken out of your staking rewards. The more a validator leans on commission rather than fees and MEV to make its living, the more it costs you as a delegator. That is the whole case for picking a low-commission, high-uptime validator — see the live validator ranking and the staking calculator for what the difference is worth on a real position.
Put the numbers to work
The commission slice above is what a validator takes from your rewards. Stake.Cake charges 0% on both inflation and MEV — see where that lands you.
FAQ
What is Solana validator operator revenue?
It is the SOL that validators themselves earn, before their running costs. It comes from three places: their commission on SOL issuance (staking inflation), their commission on Jito MEV tips, and the transaction fees in the blocks they produce — priority fees, base fees and vote fees. It does not include the rewards that pass through to delegators; that is 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 Jito 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. Over 90% of Solana stake runs the Jito client, 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. Running a validator costs SOL — vote transactions alone run to roughly one SOL a day — plus server and bandwidth costs, so operator revenue is gross, not profit. And the part that comes from commission is taken out of your rewards, which is exactly why a low-commission, reliable validator leaves more for you.
Where does this data come from?
It is aggregated from on-chain Solana rewards — the issuance commission credited to vote accounts, the transaction fees paid to block leaders, and the Jito MEV tips — summed network-wide each day and denominated in SOL.