Solana Weekly Recap (26 July 2026): Fee Reform Accepted, Phantom Cleans Up, Record Card Spend

The fourth week of July was quiet — with one notable exception: Solana accepted a change to the fee economics of the core protocol. Alongside that, the two most important Solana wallets reshuffled what they offer, and card-spend figures show how usage is developing beyond trading. We summarize the key developments and link our detailed coverage of each.

Protocol

• Fee reform accepted: the Resource and Inclusion Fees SIMD reached “accepted” status. Going forward, 2500 lamports of the base fee go to the validator as a fixed share; the remainder is computed from requested compute units and burned — tying the burn directly to network load. Important: accepted does not yet mean live on mainnet. → Read more

Wallets

• Phantom ends Monad support: as of 26 August 2026, Phantom will stop supporting the Monad network. Ownership is unaffected: MON holders can import their recovery phrase into another compatible wallet, or swap directly inside Phantom into wrapped MON on Solana. In-app notices are planned. The move comes as Phantom reshapes its multi-chain lineup — shortly before, the wallet had enabled support for Robinhood Chain. For how wallets work in general, see How a Solana wallet works
• Backpack rebuilds discovery: the wallet rolled out a new “Explore” view that bundles trending content across crypto, stocks, and dApps in one place — a surface-level update with no change to custody.

Payments and usage

• Record card spend: per Solana’s own analysis, top-ups through card programs reached an all-time high of $94.32 million in May, with Q2 the strongest quarter so far. The figures cover several providers, including KAST, ReddotPay, Solayer, and Phantom Cash (self-reported, not independently verified). What people actually pay with is covered in Stablecoins on Solana compared.

Ecosystem

• Beezie launches on Solana: in its biweekly update, Superteam reports that the platform for physical graded collectible cards reached roughly $2 million in volume in its first 48 hours (self-reported). It adds another consumer project to the set of applications mapping real-world objects on-chain.

Further reading

• Solana fees explained — base fee, priority fees, and compute units in the current model
• Solana governance explained: SIMDs and SGPs — how a proposal becomes a protocol change
• How a Solana wallet works

Not financial advice. This weekly recap summarizes publicly reported developments. Project-reported volume figures are marked as such and have not been independently verified.