Most ratings tell you where something landed. Fewer tell you what the evidence behind the rating actually covers, and almost none tell you where it runs out.

This is our full published research on Solana, read straight through. Everything below was returned by our own system on September 15, 2026 for free.

Our model rates SOL at 69.7, tier T2, tier name Sound, which under our published bands is B / Sound. It sits at rank 5 in our ranking on that date.

One number alongside it, and this is the one most people never look for: our published record carries a score change of plus 0.9, dated August 20, 2026. That is the last change to this score that our record publishes. It is a small move by our own standard, so we are not going to make anything of it.

We are also not going to tell you what caused it, and it is worth being exact about why. The fields that would say what moved inside the score, the per dimension numbers and the gate results, are not available in the free view this piece is written from. So rather than guess at a reason, we are telling you what our record publishes and leaving the reason where it belongs, which is behind an account rather than behind our imagination.

Quoted exactly as returned on September 15, 2026:

"Solana is a Proof of Stake layer-one blockchain built for fast, low-cost applications on one shared ledger. Its architecture uses Proof of History as a timing system and supports parallel execution of compatible smart contracts. SOL is the native token used to pay transaction fees, participate in network activity, and support staking-based security."

And, on what makes it distinct:

"Solana’s main distinction is an emphasis on high throughput and quick confirmation without depending on fragmented execution across several layers."

Two things in that second sentence are worth slowing down on, because they are the whole design argument in one line. High throughput means the network is built to process a lot of transactions. Without depending on fragmented execution across several layers means it tries to do that on one chain rather than by pushing activity onto additional systems stacked on top. Whether that is the right trade is a genuine open question in this category, and our description does not pretend to settle it.

Here is the part of our published research view that argues in Solana's favour, quoted as written:

"Solana’s strongest evidence is its substantial transaction volume, fee generation, growing developer momentum, active consumer applications, and strong market liquidity. The network offers a clear high-throughput design and has improved its reliability materially, supporting a stronger operating case than its earlier outage history suggested."

Read that carefully and notice the shape of it. Four of the five strengths named are things that can be counted: transaction volume, fees, developers, applications. The fifth, market liquidity, is a market fact rather than an opinion. And the sentence about reliability is doing something a rating rarely does in public, which is crediting improvement against the asset's own bad history rather than either forgetting the history or refusing to move on from it.

One more line from the same paragraph, and this one cuts both ways:

"Its single-layer approach can make activity easier to observe, although the supplied context indicates that much usage is driven by memecoin activity, which may be less durable than broader application demand."

That is the single most useful sentence in the whole record, and it is a strength and a qualification in one breath. Activity that happens on one chain is activity you can see. But being able to see it means you can also see what kind of activity it is, and our record says a lot of it is memecoin trading. Usage is not one thing. A network busy with speculation and a network busy with applications people depend on look similar in a transaction count and are not similar at all.

Now the other half, quoted as written:

"Security and resilience remain important trade-offs. One dominant client creates implementation concentration, while the prior outage record remains relevant despite improvement. SOL also has inflationary issuance, and historical insider, venture, and exchange-estate holdings create continuing supply and distribution concerns."

Four named limitations, and each one is specific enough that you could go and check it yourself. In plain terms:

One dominant client. A blockchain is run by software that many computers operate independently. If nearly all of them run the same program, then a bug in that one program is a bug in the whole network at once. More independent implementations means a fault in one does not stop everything.

The prior outage record. Solana has gone down before. Our research says the reliability picture has materially improved and also says the history stays relevant. Both of those are in the record, and we are not dropping either one.

Inflationary issuance. New SOL is created over time. That is a design choice rather than an accident, and it means the existing supply is diluted unless demand grows to meet it.

Historical insider, venture, and exchange-estate holdings. Large blocks of the token have sat with early backers, investors, and in one case the estate of a failed exchange. Where a lot of an asset is concentrated and could eventually be sold, that is a fact about the supply that has nothing to do with how good the technology is.

And the closing qualification, which is about liquidity turning into a double-edged fact:

"Deep spot and derivatives liquidity are advantages, yet they can increase exposure to rapid sentiment shifts."

Being easy to trade is good. Being easy to trade in both directions, very fast, by a lot of people at once, is the same property viewed from the other side.

If you read only one line of our Solana research, read this one:

"The research context supports meaningful present usage and momentum but does not establish that current activity will persist across market conditions or develop into a wider set of durable applications."

That is the hinge. It is not a claim that Solana is weak. It is a claim about what the evidence reaches. Present activity: established. Durability of that activity: not established. B / Sound is what a strong, busy, genuinely used network looks like in our framework when the case for its activity lasting has not yet been made in the record.

And our research names the risks it is actually worried about, in its own closing line:

"The principal risks are renewed technical interruptions, concentration, inflation, supply overhang, and reliance on activity categories that may prove cyclical."

You can run this on any research page anywhere, including ours. Three questions:

What did the evidence actually cover? Not "is the write-up positive." Our Solana record is broadly positive and still says, in terms, that durability is not established. Those two things live together comfortably in an honest document and uncomfortably in a sales pitch.

Which limitations are named, and are they checkable? "Some risks remain" is not a limitation. "One dominant client creates implementation concentration" is. The first tells you the writer is covering themselves. The second tells you what to go and look at.

What date is on it? Ours says September 15, 2026, throughout, because research that is not dated is a rumour about research. Our scores move and our research prose moves with them.

Solana's page, along with the rest of the assets visible without an account, is free and needs no login:

https://cryptograde.ai/tokens/solana

If the asset you actually hold is not one of the ones visible there, that is the specific reason to make a free CryptoGrade account rather than a general one. A free account opens the full top 200 ranked by CryptoGrade's own score, highest to lowest, with the research page behind each one. And if you want to know why one of our scores moved rather than just that it did, that is where to find it:

https://cryptograde.ai